Interculturalism Multiculturalism Debate

This article was downloaded by: [University of Bristol]On: 17 April 2012, At: 03:17Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registeredoffice: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

Journal of Intercultural StudiesPublication details, including instructions for authors andsubscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cjis20

How does Interculturalism Contrastwith Multiculturalism?Nasar Meer & Tariq Modood

Available online: 19 Dec 2011

To cite this article: Nasar Meer & Tariq Modood (2012): How does Interculturalism Contrast withMulticulturalism?, Journal of Intercultural Studies, 33:2, 175-196

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07256868.2011.618266

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Anysubstantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing,systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden.

The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representationthat the contents will be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of anyinstructions, formulae, and drug doses should be independently verified with primarysources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings,demand, or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly orindirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material.

http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cjis20

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07256868.2011.618266

http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions


How does Interculturalism Contrastwith Multiculturalism?Nasar Meer & Tariq Modood

This paper critically examines some of the ways in which conceptions of interculturalism

are being positively contrasted with multiculturalism, especially as political ideas. It

argues that while some advocates of a political interculturalism wish to emphasise its

positive qualities in terms of encouraging communication, recognising dynamic

identities, promoting unity and critiquing illiberal cultural practices, each of these

qualities too are important (on occasion foundational) features of multiculturalism. The

paper begins with a broad introduction before exploring the provenance of multi-

culturalism as an intellectual tradition, with a view to assessing the extent to which its

origins continue to shape its contemporary public ‘identity’. We adopt this line of enquiry

to identify the extent to which some of the criticism of multiculturalism is rooted in an

objection to earlier formulations that displayed precisely those elements deemed

unsatisfactory when compared with interculturalism. Following this discussion, the

paper moves on to four specific areas of comparison between multiculturalism and

interculturalism. It concludes that until interculturalism as a political discourse is able to

offer a distinct perspective, one that can speak to a variety of concerns emanating from

complex identities and matters of equality and diversity in a more persuasive manner

than at present, interculturalism cannot, intellectually at least, eclipse multiculturalism,

and so should be considered as complementary to multiculturalism.

Keywords: Citizenship; Cultural Diversity; Interculturalism; Liberalism; Multiculturalism

It has been said that the first decade of the twenty-first century will be remembered

for a series of historical episodes, including international military conflicts and global

Nasar Meer is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the School of Arts and Social Sciences, Northumbria University.

Correspondence to: Dr Nasar Meer, Department of Social Sciences, Northumbria University, Lipman Building,

Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 8ST, UK. Email: [email protected]

Tariq Modood is Professor of Sociology, Politics and Public Policy and the Director of the Centre for the Study

of Ethnicity and Citizenship at the University of Bristol. He is a co-founding editor of the international journal

Ethnicities.

ISSN 0725-6868 print/ISSN 1469-9540 online/12/020175-22

# 2012 Taylor & Francis

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07256868.2011.618266

Journal of Intercultural Studies

Vol. 33, No. 2, April 2012, pp. 175�196

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f B

rist

ol]

at 0

3:17

17

Apr

il 20

12

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07256868.2011.618266

financial crises; for technological innovations in mass communication, information

collection, storage and surveillance; alongside an increased recognition of climate

change and an associated environmental awareness (Serwer 2009). Whether or not

future generations will come to share this assessment, and while initially much less

dramatic, the last 10 years has also witnessed seemingly rapid and perhaps significant

developments in the ways plural societies organise living with ‘difference’.

For example, it has been argued that during the last decade there has been an

observable ‘retreat’ in north-western Europe from relatively modest � compared with

those of Federal Canada � approaches of multicultural citizenship across a variety of

citizenship regimes (Brubaker 2001, Joppke 2004, McGhee 2008). Yet this ‘retreat’ has

already been shown to be a complicated and mixed affair (Jacobs and Rea 2007, Meer

and Modood 2009a). With much greater certainty one could state that the appeal of

multiculturalism as a public policy has suffered considerable political damage, such

that the argument that multiculturalism is a valuable means of ‘‘remaking of public

identities in order to achieve an equality of citizenship that is neither merely

individualistic nor premised on assimilation’’ (Modood 2005: 5), is not being

embraced as broadly as it once might have been.

The reasons for this are various, but include how for some multiculturalism has

facilitated social fragmentation and entrenched social divisions (Malik 2007, Policy

Exchange 2007); for others it has distracted attention away from socio-economic

disparities (Barry 2001, Hansen 2006); or encouraged a moral hesitancy amongst

‘native’ populations (Prins and Salisbury 2008, Caldwell 2009). Some even blame it

for international terrorism (Gove 2006, Phillips 2006). While these political positions

are the instigators of anxieties over multiculturalism, other beneficiaries have

included a number of competing political orientations concerned with promoting

unity, variously conceived, alongside or in a greater degree to recognising diversity

(Modood and Meer 2011). Some observe this focus in the discovery or rediscovery of

national identity (Orgad 2009); others point to its evidence in notions of civicness

(Mouritsen 2008), or in a resurgent liberalism that allegedly proves, in the final

analysis, to be ‘neutral’ (Joppke 2008). To this we could also add social or community

cohesion (Dobbernack 2010).

Such issues have been discussed at length in a variety of contributions, including in

those of the present authors, yet one further ‘competitor’ term has been explored far

less despite both its frequent invocation in public discourse and that it appears to

retain something of what multiculturalism is concerned with. This is the concept of

‘interculturalism’ and the related idea of ‘intercultural dialogue’ (Kohls and Knight,

1994, Belhachimi 1997, Milton 1998, Gundara 2000, Gundara and Jacobs 2000,

Kymlicka 2003, Powell and Sze 2004, Gagnon and Iacovino 2007, Emerson, 2011).

For example, the concept of interculturalism is now frequently found in places as

diverse as German and Greek education programmes (Luctenberg 2003, Gropos and

Tryandifillidou 2011); Belgian commissions on cultural diversity (see below); and

Russian teaching on world cultures (Froumin 2003). A prominent symbolic example

could be how 2008 was designated as the European Year of Intercultural Dialogue

176 N. Meer & T. Modood

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f B

rist

ol]

at 0

3:17

17

Apr

il 20

12

(EYID), with the European Commission’s stated objective being to encourage ‘‘all

those living in Europe to explore the benefits of our rich cultural heritage and

opportunities to learn from different cultural traditions’’.1

It is worth stepping back from these fine sentiments, however, to consider what

distinguishes these efforts from other established approaches concerned with

recognising cultural diversity. Is it merely the case, as Lentin (2005: 394) has

suggested, that interculturalism is an ‘updated version’ of multiculturalism? If so,

what is being ‘updated’? If not, in what ways � if at all � is interculturalism different,

substantively or otherwise, from multiculturalism? With a specific focus on the

political, in this paper we tentatively sketch out and critically evaluate four ways in

which conceptions of interculturalism are being positively contrasted with multi-

culturalism (while these four positive evaluations of interculturalism overlap we also

consider them to be sufficiently distinct to be discussed separately). These are, first, as

something greater than coexistence, in that interculturalism is allegedly more geared

toward interaction and dialogue than multiculturalism. Second, that interculturalism

is conceived as something less ‘groupist’ or more yielding of synthesis than

multiculturalism. Third, that interculturalism is something more committed to a

stronger sense of the whole, in terms of such things as societal cohesion and national

citizenship. Finally, that where multiculturalism may be illiberal and relativistic,

interculturalism is more likely to lead to criticism of illiberal cultural practices (as

part of the process of intercultural dialogue).

It is important to register at the outset that we are here concerned with what we

understand as ‘political interculturalism’, by which we mean the ways in which

interculturalism is appropriated in the critique of multiculturalism (Booth 2003, Sze

and Powell 2004, Wood et al. 2006), in a manner that is not necessarily endorsed by

wider advocates of interculturalism (in a situation not too dissimilar to how

Western feminism (Moller Okin 1997) may be appropriated in the critique of non-

Western cultures (see, for example, Malik 2007, Phillips 2007)). Moreover, the

purpose of this article is not to offer a comprehensive account of the topic, but to

provide an entry point in developing a discussion, especially in relation to

multiculturalism and interculturalism as frameworks for political relations in

contexts of cultural diversity. To do this satisfactorily we need first to elaborate

something of our understanding of the intellectual character of multiculturalism,

and it is to this that we now turn.

Liberalism and Multiculturalism

To some commentators the staple issues that multiculturalism seeks to address, such

as the rights of ethnic and national minorities, group representation and perhaps

even the political claims-making of ‘new’ social movements, are in fact ‘‘familiar

Journal of Intercultural Studies 177

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f B

rist

ol]

at 0

3:17

17

Apr

il 20

12

long-standing problems of political theory and practice’’ (Kelly 2002: 1). Indeed,

some hold this view to the point of frustration:

If we take a very broad definition of multiculturalism so that it simply correspondsto the demand that cultural diversity be accommodated, there is no necessaryconflict between it and liberalism. [. . .] But most multiculturalists boast that theyare innovators in political philosophy by virtue of having shown that liberalismcannot adequately satisfy the requirements of equal treatment and justice underconditions of cultural diversity. (Barry 2002: 205)

The first part of Barry’s statement is perhaps more conciliatory than might be

anticipated from an author admired for his argumentative robustness and theoretical

hostility toward multiculturalism; while the second part poses more of an empirical

question. Beginning with the first part, Barry’s view is by no means rejected by those

engaged in the ‘multicultural turn’. Modood (2007a: 8), for instance, locates the

genesis of multiculturalism within a ‘‘matrix of principles that are central to

contemporary liberal democracies’’, in a manner that establishes multiculturalism as

‘‘the child of liberal egalitarianism, but like any child, it is not simply a faithful

reproduction of its parents’’. Another way of putting this is to state that as a concept,

multiculturalism is a partial outgrowth of liberalism in that it establishes

a third generation norm of legitimacy, namely respect for reasonable culturaldiversity, which needs to be considered on a par with the [first and secondgeneration] norms of freedom and equality, and so to modify policies of ‘free andequal treatment’ accordingly. (Tully 2002: 102)

Our interest is with the political implication of this ‘third-generation norm of

legitimacy’ for a concept of citizenship, which includes the recognition that social life

consists of individuals and groups, and that both need to be provided for in the

formal and informal distribution of powers; not just in law, but in representation in

the offices of the state, public committees, consultative exercises and access to public

fora. This means that while individuals have rights, mediating institutions such as

trade unions, churches, neighbourhoods, immigrant associations and so on may also

be encouraged to be active public players and fora for political discussion (and may

even have a formal representative or administrative role to play in the state). One

implication of this recognition means the re-forming of national identity and

citizenship, and offering an emotional identity with the whole to counterbalance the

emotional loyalties to ethnic and religious communities (Modood 2007a).

Picking up the second part of Barry’s statement, to what extent then do we have an

established ‘canon’ of multiculturalism as an intellectual tradition � one that

persuasively distinguishes it from varieties of liberalism? It is certainly the case that

theoretically there are three established policy-related strands of multiculturalism.

One derives from radical social theory, especially uses of Derrida, and finds

ideological expression in critiques of Eurocentrism, Afrocentrism and the wars

over ‘the canon’ in the US universities in the 1980s. Another focuses on popular


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f B

rist

ol]

at 0

3:17

17

Apr

il 20

12

culture, everyday cultural interaction and the resulting hybridity and mixedness

(Gilroy 2004), though the policy implications of such ‘multiculture’ are not usually

operative at the national level (Meer and Modood 2009a). It is the third strand,

however, which is the focus of our interest, and which grows out of policy

developments, with Canada supplying one of the maturest examples, and, pioneered

by Will Kymlicka, is best expressed in engagements with liberal political theory.

The relationship to liberalism of this third strand of multiculturalism is a pertinent

issue because it compels us to explore something of the provenance of multi-

culturalism as an intellectual tradition, with a view to assessing the extent to which its

origins continue to shape its contemporary public ‘identity’. We might reasonably ask

this to identify the extent to which some of the criticism of multiculturalism is rooted

in an objection to earlier formulations that displayed precisely those elements

deemed unsatisfactory when compared with interculturalism, for example, that

multiculturalism is more likely to be essentialist, illiberal, less agency-oriented and

less concerned with unity.

Before proceeding with this line of inquiry, it seems only reasonable to offer the

intellectual health warning that multiculturalism as a concept is � like very many

others � ‘polysemic’, such that multiculturalist authors cannot be held entirely

responsible for the variety of ways in which the term is interpreted. This is something

noted by Bhabha (1998: 31) who points to the tendency for multiculturalism to be

appropriated as a ‘portmanteau term’, one that encapsulates a variety of sometimes

contested meanings (see, for example, Meer and Modood 2009a). In this respect, the

idea of multiculturalism might be said to have a ‘chameleonic’ quality that facilitates

its simultaneous adoption and rejection in the critique or defence of a position

(Smith 2010).

One illustration of this is the manner in which multiculturalism is simultaneously

used as a label to describe the fact of pluralism or diversity in any given society, and a

moral stance that cultural diversity is a desirable feature of a given society (as well as

the different types of ways in which the state could recognise and support it).

Moreover, in both theoretical and policy discourses, multiculturalism means different

things in different places. In North America, for example, multiculturalism

encompasses discrete groups with territorial claims, such as the Native Peoples and

the Quebecois, even though these groups want to be treated as ‘nations’ within a

multinational state, rather than merely as ethnocultural groups in a mononational

state (Kymlicka 1995). Indeed, in Europe, while groups with such claims, like the

Catalans and the Scots, are thought of as nations, multiculturalism has a more

limited meaning, referring to a post-immigration urban melange and the politics it

gives rise to. One outcome is that while in North America language-based ethnicity is

seen as the major political challenge, in Western Europe the conjunction of the terms

‘immigration’ and ‘culture’ now nearly always invokes the large newly settled Muslim

populations. Sometimes, usually in America, political terms such as multiculturalism

and ‘rainbow coalition’ are meant to include all groups marked by ‘difference’ and

historic exclusion such as women and sexual minorities (Young 1990).


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f B

rist

ol]

at 0

3:17

17

Apr

il 20

12

Some have turned to this variety in meaning and usage of the term as an

explanation of the allegedly ‘‘widely divergent assessments of the short history and

potential future of multiculturalism’’ (Kivisto and Faist 2007: 35), and it is to these

different meanings and the contexts that generated them to which we now turn.

Forging Multicultural Citizenship

The term ‘multiculturalism’ emerged in the 1960s and 1970s in countries like Canada

and Australia, and to a lesser extent in Britain and the USA (where it was initially

limited to the field of education). As we have already noted, in the case of Canada the

focus was from the start on constitutional and land issues, in a way that informed

definitions of nationhood and related to unresolved legal questions concerning the

entitlements and status of indigenous peoples, not to mention the further issue of the

rise of a nationalist and secessionist movement in French-speaking Quebec.

At the outset in both Canada and Australia, multiculturalism was often presented

as an application of ‘liberal values’ in that multiculturalism in these countries

extended individual freedoms and substantiated the promise of equal citizenship. As

evidence of this position, Kymlicka (2005a) points to the then Canadian Prime

Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau’s 1971 speech on the implementation of a bilingual

framework (a precursor to the later Multicultural Act). In this, Trudeau promised

that ‘‘a policy of multiculturalism within a bilingual framework is basically the

conscious support of individual freedom of choice. We are free to be ourselves’’

(Trudeau 1971: 8546, in Kymlicka 2005a). In Kymlicka’s reading (2005a: 2), this

statement reflected the natural outgrowth of the liberalisation of Canadian social

legislation in the period between the Bill of Rights (1960) and Charter of Rights

(1982), because ‘‘the fundamental impulses behind the policy were the liberal values

of individual freedom and equal citizenship on a non-discriminatory basis’’.

While similar observations might be made in relation to Australia, they could only

be so in so far as it reflected ‘‘essentially a liberal ideology which operates within

liberal institutions with the universal approval of liberal attitudes’’ (Jupp 1996: 40, in

Kymlicka 2005a). This is because in contrast with Canada, Australian multiculturalist

policy developed more as a means to better integrate new immigrants, by easing the

expectations of rapid assimilation.2 Initially, as Levey (2008) elaborates, the policy did

not include Indigenous Australians until the end of the 1970s with the Galbally

Report (1978), which spoke of multiculturalism being a policy for ‘all Australians’

including Indigenous Australians.3

This kind of multiculturalism nevertheless simultaneously encompassed the

recognition of discrete groups with territorial claims, such as the Native Peoples

and the Quebeckers, even though these groups wanted to be treated as ‘nations’

within a multinational state, rather than as minority groups in a mononational state.

In reconciling these political claims to a political theory of liberalism, Kymlicka’s own

intellectual work is reflective of how an early theorisation of liberal multiculturalism

was developing (1995). This is because Kymlicka proposed group differentiated rights


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f B

rist

ol]

at 0

3:17

17

Apr

il 20

12

for three types of minorities comprising indigenous peoples, ‘sub-state’ national

minorities and immigrant groups. The general principles common to each of these

different types of minorities, he argued, included, first, that the state must be seen as

belonging equally to all citizens. Second, individuals should be able to access state

institutions, and act as full and equal citizens in political life, without having to hide

or deny their cultural identity. Third, the state should acknowledge the ‘historic

injustice’ done to minority (non-dominant) groups. He interpreted these principles

to mean that national and indigenous minorities were entitled to territorial

autonomy and separate political representation, while migration-based groups,

who were assumed to have no relationship to the country prior to migration, were

entitled only to ‘polyethnic rights’, namely, full civic integration that respected their

cultural identities.

Outside of Canada, in the USA, UK and later the Netherlands, respectively,

Kymlicka’s distinction between national minority rights and polyethnic rights was

not easily transposed. On the one hand, multiculturalism in these contexts mostly

comprised of ‘polyethnicity’: the policy focus was more likely to be concerned with

schooling the children of Asian/black/Hispanic post-/neo-colonial immigrants, and

multiculturalism in these instances meant the extension of the school, both in terms

of curriculum and as an institution, to include features such as ‘mother-tongue’

teaching, non-Christian religions and holidays, halal food, Asian dress and so on. On

the other hand, the citizenship regimes in European countries included historical

relationships with former colonial subjects that were distinct from the citizenship

regimes of settler nations. For example, the 1948 British Nationality Act granted

freedom of movement to all formerly or presently dependent, and now Common-

wealth, territories (irrespective of whether their passports were issued by independent

or colonial states) by creating the status of ‘Citizenship of the United Kingdom and

Colonies’ (CUKC). Until they acquired one or other of the national citizenships in

these post-colonial countries, these formerly British subjects continued to retain their

British status. Thus, post-colonial migrants to Britain were clearly not historic

minorities, but nor were they without historic claims upon Britain and so constituted

a category that did not fit Kymlicka’s categories of multicultural citizens.

Nevertheless, the term ‘multiculturalism’ in Europe came to mean, and now means

throughout the English-speaking world and beyond, the political accommodation by

the state and/or a dominant group of all minority cultures defined first and foremost

by reference to race, ethnicity or religion, and, additionally but more controversially,

by reference to other group-defining characteristics such as nationality and

aboriginality. The latter is more controversial not only because it extends the range

of the groups that have to be accommodated, but also because the larger political

claims made by such groups, who resist having these claims reduced to those of

immigrants. Hence, despite Kymlicka’s attempt to conceptualise multiculturalism-as-

multinationalism, the dominant meaning of multiculturalism in politics relates to the

claims of post-immigration groups.


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f B

rist

ol]

at 0

3:17

17

Apr

il 20

12

This provenance of multiculturalism has bequeathed to its contemporary

instantiations the importance of reconciling ideas of multiculturalism to ideas of

citizenship, within a reciprocal balance of rights and responsibilities, assumptions of

virtue and conceptions of membership or civic status (Meer 2010). While there is

agreement that the membership conferred by citizenship should entail equal

opportunity, dignity and confidence, different views remain about the proper

ways, in culturally diverse societies, to confer this civic status. Those engaged in the

‘multicultural turn’ still maintain that conceptions of citizenship can frequently

ignore the sensibilities of minorities marked by social, cultural and political

differences (May et al. 2004).

Hence, the political multiculturalism of Modood, for example, insists that ‘‘when

new groups enter a society, there has to be some education and refinement

of . . . sensitivities in the light of changing circumstances and the specific vulner-

abilities of new entrants’’ (2006: 61). As such, a widely accepted contemporary thrust

of what multiculturalism denotes includes a critique of ‘‘the myth of homogeneous

and monocultural nation-states’’ (Castles 2000: 5), and an advocacy of the right of

minority ‘‘cultural maintenance and community formation, linking these to social

equality and protection from discrimination’’ (5).

Beyond Multicultural Coexistence, towards Intercultural Dialogue and

Communication

Outside of Canada and North America more broadly, the idea of interculturalism has

hitherto more commonly featured in Dutch (de Witt 2010) and German (Miera

2011) accounts of integration, as well as in Spanish and Greek discussion of migrant

diversity in the arena of education (Gundara 2000). Until relatively recently it has

been less present in British discourses because concepts of race relations, anti-racism,

race equality and multiculturalism have been more prominent (Gundara and Jacobs

2000). While its current advocates conceive it as something societal and therefore of

much broader appeal than in a specific commercial usage found in some American

formulations (in terms of facilitating ‘communication’ across transnational business

and commerce) (Carig 1994, Bennett 1998), what its present formulation perhaps

retains from such incarnations is an emphasis upon communication. Indeed,

according to Wood et al. (2006: 9) ‘communication’ is the defining characteristic,

and the central means through which ‘‘an intercultural approach aims to facilitate

dialogue, exchange and reciprocal understanding between people of different

backgrounds’’. The question is to what extent this can be claimed as either a unique

or distinguishing quality of interculturalism when dialogue and reciprocity too are

foundational to most, if not all, accounts of multiculturalism. To put it another way,

what makes communication unique for interculturalism in a manner that diverges

from multiculturalism? According to some advocates, a difference is perceptible in


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f B

rist

ol]

at 0

3:17

17

Apr

il 20

12

the social or convivial ‘openness’ in which communication is facilitated. As Wood

et al. (2006: 7) maintain:

Multiculturalism has been founded on the belief in tolerance between cultures butit is not always the case that multicultural places are open places. Interculturalismon the other hand requires openness as a prerequisite and, while openness in itselfis not the guarantee of interculturalism, it provides the setting for interculturalismto develop.

The ‘openness’ or ‘closedness’ that the authors have in mind is not an ethical or

moral but a sociological concern related to � if not derived from � a spatial sense of

community and settlement as discussed further below. However, it is also an

openness of another kind that is not more than a few steps away from what Smith

(2004) characterises as models of inter-religious dialogue. These models come from

the North American context, including the ‘Dialogue as Information Sharing’ and

‘Dialogue to Come Closer Model’, which encourage religious groups to focus on

commonalities, in a way that seeks to eschew differences in order to elevate mutuality

and sharing. What is striking, however, is the extent to which Wood et al.’s

characterisation ignores how central the notions of dialogue and communication are

to multiculturalism (2006). This might easily be illustrated with reference to some

canonical contributions that have provided a great deal of intellectual impetus to the

advocacy of multiculturalism as a political or public policy movement.

Our first example could be Charles Taylor’s essay from 1992, widely considered to

be a founding statement of multiculturalism in political theory, and in which he

characterises the emergence of a modern politics of identity premised upon an idea of

‘recognition’. The notion of recognition, and its relationship to multiculturalism, can

be abstract but is located for Taylor as something that has developed out of a move

away from conceiving historically defined or inherited hierarchies as the sole

provenance of social status (in the French sense of preference), toward a notion of

dignity more congruent with the ideals of a democratic society or polity, one that is

more likely to confer political equality and a full or unimpaired civic status upon all

its citizens.4

Drawing upon his previous, densely catalogued account of the emergence of the

modern self (Taylor 1989), Taylor mapped the political implications of this move

onto two cases of Equality. The first is the most familiar and is characterised as a

rights-based politics of universalism, which offers the prospect of affording equal

dignity to all citizens in a polity. The second denotes a politics of difference where the

uniqueness of context, history and identity are salient and potentially ascendant. For

Taylor, this coupling crystallises the way in which the idea of recognition has given

rise to a search for ‘authenticity’. This is characterised as a move away from the

prescriptive universalisms that have historically underwritten ideas of the Just or the

Right, in favour of the fulfilment and realisation of one’s true self, originality or

worth. According to Taylor, therefore, people can no longer be recognised on the

basis of identities determined from their positions in social hierarchies alone but


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f B

rist

ol]

at 0

3:17

17

Apr

il 20

12

rather, through taking account of the real manner in which people form their

identities. That is to say that Taylor emphasises the importance of ‘dialogical’

relationships to argue that it is a mistake to suggest that people form their identities

‘monologically’ or without an intrinsic dependence upon dialogue with others (see

Meer 2010: 31�56). As such he maintains that we are ‘‘always in dialogue with,

sometimes in struggle against, the things our significant others want to see in us’’

(Taylor 1992: 33).

In this formulation, Taylor openly draws upon both Hegel and Mead, each of

whom maintained that our idea of ourselves, what we claim to be and what we really

think we are, is dependent upon how others come to view us to the extent that our

sense of self is developed in a continuing dialogue. Self-consciousness exists only by

being acknowledged or recognised, and the related implication for Taylor is that a

sense of socio-cultural self-esteem emerges not only from personal identity, but also

in relation to the group in which this identity is developed. This is expressed in

Taylor’s account as follows (1992: 25�26):

[O]ur identity is partly shaped by recognition or its absence, often by themisrecognition of others, and so a person or group of people can suffer realdamage, real distortion, if the people or society around them mirror back aconfining or demeaning or contemptible picture of themselves. Non recognition ormisrecognition can inflict harm, can be a form of oppression, imprisoning some ina false, distorted, and reduced mode of being.

This is therefore one illustration of how central a concern with dialogue and

communication is to multiculturalism too.

Let us consider another landmark text on this topic: Bhikhu Parekh’s Rethinking

Multiculturalism (2000). The central argument here is that cultural diversity and

social pluralism are of intrinsic value precisely because they challenge people to

evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of their own cultures and ways of life. Parekh

explicitly distinguishes his multiculturalism from various liberal and communitarian

positions. Some of the latter recognise that cultures can play an important role in

making choices meaningful for their members (Kymlicka 1995), or play host to the

development of the self for the members of that culture (Sandel 1982). Their

argument that culture is important for individual group members is well taken but

they are less successful in explaining why cultural diversity is necessarily valuable in

itself. To this Parekh (2000: 167) offers the following explanation:

Since human capacities and values conflict, every culture realizes a limited range ofthem and neglects, marginalizes and suppresses others. However rich it may be, noculture embodies all that is valuable in human life and develops the full range ofhuman possibilities. Different cultures thus correct and complement each other,expand each other’s horizon of thought and alert each other to new forms ofhuman fulfilment. The value of other cultures is independent of whether or notthey are options for us . . . inassimilable otherness challenges us intellectually and


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f B

rist

ol]

at 0

3:17

17

Apr

il 20

12

morally, stretches our imagination, and compels us to recognize the limits of ourcategories of thought.

His argument that cultures other than one’s own have something to teach us, and

that members of minority cultures should therefore be encouraged to cultivate their

moral and aesthetic insights for humanity as a whole, is largely built upon an

assumption of intercultural dialogue. Indeed, for both Taylor and Parekh, commu-

nication and dialogue are in different ways integral features to their intellectual and

political advocacy of multiculturalism, and by implication must necessarily be

considered so by those drawing upon their work unless a different reading is offered.

The point is that to consider multiculturalists who draw upon these and similar

formulations as being unconcerned with matters of dialogue and communication is

to profoundly misread and mischaracterise their positions.

Moreover, even amongst those theorists who do not elaborate a philosophical

concept of dialogical multiculturalism, dialogue is important at a political level.

Whatever their varying views about the importance of say entrenched rights,

democratic majoritarianism, special forms of representation and so on, they all see

multiculturalism as the giving of ‘voice’ in the public square to marginalised groups

(Young 1990, Kymlicka 1995, Tully 1995, Modood 2007a). Specifically, these authors

also argue that dialogue is the way to handle difficult cases of cultural practices such

as clitoridectomy, hate speech, religious dress, gender relations and so on (see also

Eisenberg 2009 on public assessment of identity claims). Therefore, whether it is at a

philosophical or a political level, the leading theorists of multiculturalism give

dialogue a centrality missing in liberal nationalist or human rights or class-based

approaches � and missed by interculturalist critics of multiculturalism. The

multiculturalists assume, however, that there is a sense in which the participants to

a dialogue are ‘groups’ or ‘cultures’ and this leads us to a second point of alleged

contrast with interculturalists.

Less Groupist and Culture-Bound: More Synthesised and Interactive

A related means through which the concern with ‘closed’ communities or groupings

that advocates of interculturalism conceive multiculturalism as giving rise to, takes us

to our next characterisation of interculturalism contra multiculturalism. This is

found in the assertion that ‘‘one of the implications of an intercultural framework, as

opposed to a multicultural one . . . is that culture is acting in a multi-directional

manner’’ (Hammer 2004:1). This depiction of interculturalism as facilitating an

interactive and dynamic cultural ‘exchange’ informs a consistent line of distinction, as

the following two portrayals make clear:

Multiculturalism tends to preserve a cultural heritage, while interculturalismacknowledges and enables cultures to have currency, to be exchanged, to circulate,to be modified and evolve. (Sze and Powell 2004)


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f B

rist

ol]

at 0

3:17

17

Apr

il 20

12

[Interculturalism] is concerned with the task of developing cohesive civil societiesby turning notions of singular identities into those of multiple ones, and bydeveloping a shared and common value system and public culture. In buildingfrom a deep sharing of differences of culture and experience it encourages theformation of interdependencies which structure personal identities that go beyondnations or simplified ethnicities. (Booth 2003: 432)

This emphasis is warranted for advocates of interculturalism who maintain that the

diversity of the locations from where migrants and ethnic minorities herald, gives rise

not to a creation of communities or groups but to a churning mass of languages,

ethnicities and religions all cutting across each other and creating a ‘superdiversity’

(Vertovec 2007). An intercultural perspective is better served to facilitate manage-

ment of these sociological realities, it is argued, in a way that can be positively

contrasted against a multiculturalism that emphasises strong ethnic or cultural

identities at the expense of wider cultural exchanges.

Notwithstanding this problematic description of how groups feature in multi-

culturalism, which is challenged in other readings (see, for example, Modood

2007a and Meer, 2010), what such characterisations of interculturalism ignore are

the alternative ways in which political interculturalism is itself conceptualised. As

stated at the outset, by political interculturalism we refer to ways in which

interculturalism is appropriated in the critique of multiculturalism (Booth 2003,

Sze and Powell 2004, Wood et al. 2006), in a way that may not necessarily be

endorsed by interculturalism’s advocates.

Writing from the Quebec context, Gagnon and Iacovino (2007) are one example of

authors who contrast interculturalism positively with multiculturalism. The inter-

esting aspect for our discussion is that they do so in a way that relies upon a

formulation of groups, and by arguing that Quebec has developed a distinctive

intercultural political approach to diversity that is explicitly in opposition to Federal

Canadian multiculturalism. Their starting point is that two broad considerations are

accepted by a variety of political positions, including liberal nationalists, republicans

and multiculturalists; indeed, by most positions except liberal individualism, which

they critique and leave to one side. These two considerations are that, first, ‘‘full

citizenship status requires that all cultural identities be allowed to participate in

democratic life equally, without the necessity of reducing conceptions of identity to

the level of the individual’’ (Gagnon and Iacovino 2007: 96). Second, with respect to

unity: ‘‘the key element is a sense of common purpose in public matters’’, ‘‘a centre

which also serves as a marker of identity in the larger society and denotes in itself a

pole of allegiance for all citizens’’ (96).

For Gagnon and Iacovino, however, Canadian multiculturalism has two fatal

flaws, which means that it is de facto liberal individualist in practice if not in

theory. First, it privileges an individualist approach to culture: as individuals or

their choices change, the collective culture must change; in contrast, Quebec’s

policy states clearly the need to recognise the French language as a collective good

requiring protection and encouragement (Rocher et al. in Gagnon and Iacovino


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f B

rist

ol]

at 0

3:17

17

Apr

il 20

12

2007: 99). Second, Canadian multiculturalism locates itself not in democratic

public culture but rather ‘‘[p]ublic space is based on individual participation via a

bill of rights’’ (110�111); judges and individual choices, not citizens debating and

negotiating with each other become the locus of cultural interaction and public

multiculturalism.

Gagnon and Iacovino’s positive argument for interculturalism can therefore be

expressed in the following five stages. First, there should be a public space and

identity that is not merely about individual constitutional or legal rights. Second,

this public space is an important identity for those who share it and so qualifies

and counterbalances other identities that citizens value. Third, this public space is

created and shared through participation, interaction, debate and common

endeavour. Fourth, this public space is not culture-less but nor is it merely the

‘majority culture’, all can participate in its synthesis and evolution and while it has

an inescapable historical character, it is always being remade and ought to be

remade to include new groups. Fifth and finally, Quebec, and not merely federal

Canada, is such a public space and so an object to which immigrants need to have

identification with and integrate into and should seek to maintain Quebec as a

nation and not just a federal province (the same point may apply in other

multinational states but there are different degrees and variations of ‘multi-

nationalism’ cf Bouchard, 2011).

This characterisation then is very different to that proposed by Booth (2003),

Hammer (2004) or Sze and Powell (2004) because it makes a moral and policy

case for the recognition of relatively distinct sub-state nationalisms. As such it is

less concerned with the diversity of the locations from where migrants and ethnic

minorities herald or the superdiversity that this is alleged to cultivate therein. Its

emphasis on multinationalism does distinguish it from post-immigration multi-

culturalism (and post-immigration interculturalism) but not multiculturalism per

se (see, for example, Kymlicka 1995). Alternative, less macro-level interculturalism

that focuses on neighbourhoods, classroom pedagogy, the funding of the arts and

so on, on the other hand, seems a-political. As such, they are not critiques of

multiculturalism but a different exercise.

Committed to a Stronger Sense of Whole; National Identity and Social Cohesion

A third related charge is that far from being a system that speaks to the whole of

society, multiculturalism, unlike interculturalism, speaks only to and for the

minorities within it and, therefore, also fails to appreciate the necessary wider

framework for its success. As Goodhart (2004) has protested, multiculturalism is a-

symmetrical in that it not only places too great an emphasis upon difference and

diversity, upon what divides us more than what unites us, but also that it ignores the

needs of majorities. It thus encourages resentment, fragmentation and disunity. This

can be prevented or overcome, as Alev (2007) and other commentators put it,

through invocations of interculturalism that promote community cohesion on a local


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f B

rist

ol]

at 0

3:17

17

Apr

il 20

12

level, and more broadly through an interculturalism that encourages the subscription

to national citizenship identities as forms of meta-membership:

Interculturalism is a better term than multiculturalism. It emphasises interaction andparticipation of citizens in a common society, rather than cultural differences anddifferent cultures existing next to each other without necessarily much contact orparticipative interaction. Interculturalism is therefore equivalent to mutual integra-tion.

While multiculturalism boils down to celebrating difference, interculturalism isabout understanding each other’s cultures, sharing them and finding commonground on which people can become more integrated. (NewStart Magazine 7June 2006)

These common grounds embody a kind of commonality that members of society

need to have and which is said to have been obscured by a focus on difference. It is

argued that European societies and states have been too laissez-faire in promoting

commonality and this must now be remedied (Joppke 2004), hence the introduction

of measures such as swearing of oaths of allegiance at naturalisation ceremonies,

language proficiency requirements for citizenship and citizenship education in

schools, amongst other things. What such sentiment ignores is how all forms of

prescribed unity, including civic unity, usually retain a majoritarian bias that places

the burden of adaptation upon the minority, and so is inconsistent with

interculturalism’s alleged commitment to ‘mutual integration’ as put forward in

Alev’s account.

As Viet Bader (2005: 169) reminds us: ‘‘all civic and democratic cultures are

inevitably embedded into specific ethno-national and religious histories’’. Were we to

assess the normative premise of this view, however, we would inevitably encounter a

dense literature elaborating the continuing disputes over the interactions between the

civic, political and ethnic dimensions in the creation of nations, national identities

and their relationship to each other and to non-rational ‘intuitive’ and ‘emotional’

pulls of ancestries and cultures and so forth. Chief amongst these is whether or not

‘nations’ are social and political formations developed in the proliferation of modern

nation-states from the eighteenth century onwards, or whether they constitute social

and political formations � or ‘ethnies’ � bearing an older pedigree that may be

obscured by a modernist focus. What is most relevant to our discussion, however, is

not the debate between different camps of ‘modernist’, ‘ethno-symbolist’ and

‘primordialist’ protagonists, among others, but rather the ways in which minorities’

differences are conceived in contemporary form of meta-unity.5

It is perhaps telling, however, that much of the literature on national identity in

particular has tended to be retrospective; to the extent that such contemporary

concerns do not enjoy a widespread appeal in nationalism studies (while the opposite

could be said to be true of the literature on citizenship). This tendency is not limited

to academic arenas and one of the curiosities in popular articulations of national

identity is the purchase that these accounts garner from a recourse to tradition,


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f B

rist

ol]

at 0

3:17

17

Apr

il 20

12

history and the idea of a common past (Calhoun 1994). One implication is that

national identities can frequently reflect desires to authenticate the past, ‘‘to select

from all that has gone before that which is distinctive, ‘truly ours’, and thereby to

mark out a unique, shared destiny’’ (Smith 1998: 43).

It was this very assessment that, at the turn of the millennium, informed the

Commission on Multi-Ethnic Britain’s characterisation of British national identity as

potentially ‘‘based on generalisations [that] involve a selective and simplified account

of a complex history’’ (CMEB 2000). Chaired by Bhikhu Parekh, it feared such an

account would be one in which ‘‘[m]any complicated strands are reduced to a simple

tale of essential and enduring national unity’’ (CMEB 2000: 2.9, 16). It was precisely

this tendency that informed the CMEB’s alarm at how invocations of national

identity potentially force ethnic minorities into a predicament not of their making:

one in which majorities are conflated with the nation and where national identity is

promoted as a reflection of this state of affairs (because national identities are

assumed to be cognates of monistic nations). For, in not easily fitting into a

majoritarian account of national identity, or being either unable or unwilling to be

reduced to, or assimilated into, a prescribed public culture, minority ‘differences’ may

become variously negatively conceived.

These concerns have not been limited to the UK and may be observed in the

Intercultural Dialog Commission (2005) set up by the federal government in Belgium

to facilitate a transition at the federal level from an emphasis on integration to

cultural diversity. This identified several historical tendencies, concerning (i) a

political pluralism that facilitated working-class emancipation and wider political

consultation; (ii) philosophical pluralism that incrementally led to the official

recognition of various public religions (Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Islamic and

Anglican) and non-religion; and (iii) community pluralism as stemming from

Flemish and Walloon movements that created the current federal State of Belgium.

Importantly, the Commissioners underscored a further form of pluralism as the next

step: (iv) cultural pluralism. More precisely they insisted that integration issues

should take into account relevant cultural dimensions and that it no longer makes

sense to qualify the descendents of migrants as ‘migrant’ or ‘allochtone’ � used

respectively in the Walloon and Flemish regions � instead, ‘cultural minorities’ would

be a much more relevant definition. On the whole, the report focused its conclusions

on the lack of cultural recognition in a manner that later invited the criticism that the

Commission had been highly influenced by communitarian theories: of ‘‘trying to

develop civic responsibility and common citizenship rather than thinking about an

increasing space for cultural communities’’ (La Libre 6 June 2005).

One scholarly intervention in this vein can be found in Modood’s restatement of

multiculturalism as a civic idea that can be tied to an inclusive national identity

(2007a); some of the responses this has elicited (see Modood 2007b) helps cast light

upon this debate. This concern was present in his Not Easy Being British: Colour,

Culture and Citizenship first published in 1992 where, not unusually among advocates

of multiculturalism, Modood emphasised the role of citizenship in fostering


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f B

rist

ol]

at 0

3:17

17

Apr

il 20

12

commonality across differences, before recasting part of this civic inclusion as

proceeding through claims-making upon, and therefore reformulating, national

identities. In his more contemporary formulation, he puts this thus:

[I]t does not make sense to encourage strong multicultural or minority identitiesand weak common or national identities; strong multicultural identities are a goodthing � they are not intrinsically divisive, reactionary or subversive � but they needthe complement of a framework of vibrant, dynamic, national narratives and theceremonies and rituals which give expression to a national identity. It is clear thatminority identities are capable of exerting an emotional pull for the individuals forwhom they are important. Multicultural citizenship, if it is to be equally attractiveto the same individuals, requires a comparable counterbalancing emotional pull.(Modood 2007b)

This restatement contains at least two key points that are central to the preceding

discussion. The first concerns an advocacy and continuity of earlier forms of

multiculturalism that have sought to accommodate collective identities and

incorporate differences into the mainstream. These differences are not only tolerated

but respected, and include the turning of a ‘negative’ difference into a ‘positive’

difference in a way that is presented in the ethnic pride currents as elements of racial

equality. The second is to place greater emphasis upon the unifying potential in an

affirmation of a renegotiated and inclusive national identity therein. While the latter

point is welcomed by some commentators who had previously formed part of the

pluralistic left, the bringing of previously marginalised groups into the societal

mainstream is, at best, greeted more ambivalently.

Illiberalism and Culture

The fourth charge is that multiculturalism lends itself to illiberality and relativism,

whereas interculturalism has the capacity to criticise and censure culture (as part of a

process of intercultural dialogue), and so is more likely to emphasise the protection

of individual rights.

In Europe this charge clearly assumes a role in the backlash against multi-

culturalism since, as Kymlicka (2005b: 83) describes, ‘‘it is very difficult to get

support for multiculturalism policies if the groups that are the main beneficiaries of

these policies are perceived as carriers of illiberal cultural practices that violate norms

of human rights’’. This view is particularly evident in the debates concerning the

accommodation of religious minorities, especially when the religion in question is

perceived to take a conservative line on issues of gender equality, sexual orientation

and progressive politics generally � something that has arguably led some

commentators who may otherwise sympathise with religious minorities to argue

that it is difficult to view them as victims when they may themselves be potential

oppressors (see Meer and Modood 2009b).

Kymlicka (2005b: 83) narrows this observation down further in his conclusion that

‘‘if we put Western democracies on a continuum in terms of the proportion of


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f B

rist

ol]

at 0

3:17

17

Apr

il 20

12

immigrants who are Muslim, I think this would provide a good indicator of public

opposition to multiculturalism’’. As Bhikhu Parekh (2006: 180�181) notes, this can be

traced to a perception that Muslims are ‘‘collectivist, intolerant, authoritarian,

illiberal and theocratic’’, and that they use their faith as ‘‘a self-conscious public

statement, not quietly held personal faith but a matter of identity which they must

jealously guard and loudly and repeatedly proclaim . . . not only to remind them of

who they are but also to announce to others what they stand for’’. It is thus

unsurprising to learn that some attitude surveys in Britain report that 77 per cent of

people are convinced that ‘‘Islam has a lot of fanatical followers’’, 68 per cent consider

it ‘‘to have more to do with the middle ages than the modern world’’ and 64 per cent

believe that Islam ‘‘treats women badly’’ (Field 2007: 453).

For these reasons, Muslim claims-making has been characterised as exceptionally

ambitious and difficult to accommodate (Joppke 2004, 2008, Moore 2004, 2006, Pew

Research 2006, Policy Exchange 2007). This is particularly the case when Muslims are

perceived to be � often uniquely � in contravention of liberal discourses of individual

rights and secularism (Toynbee 2005, Hansen 2006, Hutton 2007) and is exemplified

by the way in which visible Muslim practices such as veiling have in public discourses

been reduced to and conflated with alleged Muslim practices such as forced

marriages, female genital mutilation, a rejection of positive law in favour of criminal

sharia law and so on (Meer, Dwyer and Modood, 2010). This suggests a radical

‘otherness’ about Muslims and an illiberality about multiculturalism, since the latter

is alleged to license these practices.

One example can be found in Nick Pearce, director of the Institute for Public

Policy Research (IPPR) and former Head of the Research and Policy Unit at 10

Downing Street under Prime Minister Brown. Pearce rejects the view that religious

orientation is comparable to other forms of ethno-cultural belonging because this

‘‘may end up giving public recognition to groups which endorse fundamentally

illiberal and even irrational goals’’ (2007). He therefore argues that one obstacle to an

endorsement of multiculturalism is the public affirmation of religious identities,

something Kymlicka (2007: 54) identifies as central to a ‘liberal�illiberal’ front in the

new ‘war’ on immigrant multiculturalism.

It is difficult, however, not to view this as a knee-jerk reaction that condemns

religious identities per se, rather than examines them on a case-by-case basis, while

on the other hand assuming that ethnic identities are free of illiberalism. This is

empirically problematic given that some of the contentious practices are not religious

but cultural. Clitoridectomy, for example, is often cited as an illiberal practice in the

discussions we are referring to. It is, however, a cultural practice among various

ethnic groups, and yet has little support from any religion. Therefore, to favour

ethnicity and problematise religion is a reflection of a secularist bias that has alienated

many religionists, especially Muslims, from multiculturalism. It is much better to

acknowledge that the ‘multi’ in multiculturalism will encompass different kinds of

groups and does not itself privilege any one kind, but that ‘recognition’ should be


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f B

rist

ol]

at 0

3:17

17

Apr

il 20

12

given to the identities that marginalised groups themselves value and find strength in,

whether these be racial, religious or ethnic (Modood 2007b).

Conclusions

This paper provides an entry point in developing a discussion on the relationship

between interculturalism and multiculturalism. The question it raises is to what

extent the present criteria proposed by advocates of interculturalism, in positively

contrasting it with multiculturalism, are persuasive. In assessing this we maintain that

whilst interculturalism and multiculturalism share much as approaches concerned

with recognising cultural diversity, the answer to Lentin’s question (2005: 394) � is

interculturalism merely an ‘updated version’ of multiculturalism? � is in the main

‘no’. That is to say that while advocates of interculturalism wish to emphasise its

positive qualities in terms of encouraging communication, recognising dynamic

identities, promoting unity and challenging illiberality, each of these qualities already

feature (and are on occasion foundational) to multiculturalism too. Moreover,

multiculturalism presently surpasses interculturalism as a political orientation that is

able to recognise that social life consists of individuals and groups, and that both

need to be provided for in the formal and informal distribution of powers, as well as

reflected in an ethical conception of citizenship, and not just an instrumental one. As

such we conclude that until interculturalism as a political discourse is able to offer an

original perspective, one that can speak to a variety of concerns emanating from

complex identities and matters of equality and diversity in a more persuasive manner

than at present, it cannot, intellectually at least, eclipse multiculturalism.

Acknowledgements

We are most grateful to Geoff Levey, Varun Uberoi and two anonymous reviewers for

their very helpful comments on earlier drafts.

Notes

[1] See, for example: http://www.interculturaldialogue2008.eu/406.0.html?&redirect_url�my-

startpage-eyid.html

[2] We are very grateful to Geoff Levey for alerting us to the nuances of the inception of

Australian multiculturalism.

[3] This inclusiveness was formalised in the first national multicultural policy, National Agenda

for a Multicultural Australia, under the Hawke Labor government in 1989. It has been

retained in every subsequent version. While Indigenous Australians are formally included,

the policy also states that their situation is distinct and requires its own special treatment and

set of measures � consequently many Indigenous leaders themselves reject multiculturalism

as being relevant to them and indeed as undercutting their special status as First Peoples (see

Levey 2008).

[4] Thus making equal recognition an essential part of democratic culture, a point not lost on

Habermas (1994): 113) who argues that ‘‘a correctly understood theory of [citizenship]


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f B

rist

ol]

at 0

3:17

17

Apr

il 20

12

http://www.interculturaldialogue2008.eu/406.0.html?&redirect_url&hairsp;=&hairsp;my-startpage-eyid.html






rights requires a politics of recognition that protects the individual and the life contexts in

which his or her identity is formed’’.

[5] However, this concern relies perhaps on something from the cultural imaginary of the type

of ‘modernist’ argument most associated with Anderson (1983). Moreover, for a study of

how this is happening in non-political urban contexts, see Kyriakides et al. (2009).

Works Cited

Alev, F. 2007. Europe’s future: make yourselves at home, The Guardian, 5 June. Available from:

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/fatih_alev/2007/06/europes_future_make_yourselves_

at_home.html

Anderson, B., 1983. Imagined communities. London: Verso.

Bader, V., 2005. Ethnic and religious state neutrality: utopia or myth. In: H.G. Sicakkan and Y.

Lithman, eds. Changing the basis of citizenship in the modern state. Lewiston: The Edwin

Mellen Press.

Barry, B., 2001. Culture and equality: an egalitarian critique of equality. London: Polity Press.

Barry, B., 2002. Second thoughts; some first thoughts revived. In: P. Kelly, ed. Multiculturalism

reconsidered. Cambridge: Polity.

Belhachimi, Z. 1997. Multiculturalism and interculturalism in Quebec. Opinion papers, 1�16.

Bennett, M.J., 1998. Basic concepts of intercultural communication. Boston, MA: Intercultural Press.

Bhabha, H.K., 1998. Culture’s in between. In: D. Bennet, ed. Multicultural states: rethinking

difference and identity. London: Routledge.

Booth, T., 2003. Book review of: Interculturalism, Education and Inclusion. British journal of

educational studies, 51 (4), 432�433.

Bouchard, G., 2011. What is Interculturalism? McGill Law Journal, 56 (2), 435�468.

Brubaker, R., 2001. The return of assimilation? Changing perspectives on immigration and its

sequels in France, Germany, and the United States. Ethnic and racial studies, 24 (4), 531�548.

Caldwell, C., 2009. Reflections on the revolution in Europe: immigration, Islam and the West. London:

Penguin Books.

Calhoun, C. ed., 1994. Social theory and politics of identity. Oxford: Blackwell.

Castles, S., 2000. Ethnicity and globalization: from migrant worker to transnational citizen. London:

Sage.

CMEB (Commission on the Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain), 2000. The future of multi-ethnic

Britain. London: Profile Books.

Dobbernack, J., 2010. Things fall apart. Social imaginaries and the politics of cohesion. Critical

policy studies, 4 (2), 146�163.

Eisenberg, A., 2009. Reasons of identity: a normative guide to the political and legal assessment of

identity claims. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Emerson, M. ed., 2011. Interculturalism: Europe and its Muslims in search of sound societal models.

Brussels: Centre for European Policy Studies Paperbacks.

Field, C.D., 2007. Islamophobia in contemporary Britain: the evidence of the opinion polls, 1988�2006. Islam and Christian�Muslim relations, 18 (4), 447�477.

Froumin, I., 2003. Citizenship education and ethnic issues in Russia. In: J.A. Banks, ed. Diversity

and citizenship education: global perspectives. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Gagnon, A.G. and Iacovino, R., 2007. Federalism, citizenship and Quebec: debating multinationalism.

Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Goodhart, D. 2004. Too diverse? Prospect magazine, February.

Gove, M., 2006. Celsius 7/7. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson.

Gundara, J.S., 2000. Interculturalism, education and inclusion. London: Paul Chapman.


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f B

rist

ol]

at 0

3:17

17

Apr

il 20

12

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/fatih_alev/2007/06/europes_future_make_yourselves_at_home.html

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/fatih_alev/2007/06/europes_future_make_yourselves_at_home.html

Gundara, J.S. and Jacobs, S. eds., 2000. Intercultural Europe: diversity and social policy. Aldershot:

Ashgate.

Habermas, J., 1994. Struggles for recognition in the democratic constitutional state. In: C. Taylor

and A. Gutmann, eds. Multiculturalism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Hammer, L., 2004. Foreword. In: D. Powell and F. Sze, eds. Interculturalism: exploring critical issues.

Oxford: Interdisciplinary Press.

Hansen, R., 2006. The Danish cartoon controversy: a defence of liberal freedom. International

migration, 44 (5), 7�16.

Hutton, W. 2007. Why the West must stay true to itself, The Observer, 17 June. Available from:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2007/jun/17/religion.comment [Accessed 13 July

2008].

Jacobs, D. and Rea, A., 2007. The end of national models? Integration courses and citizenship

trajectories in Europe. International journal on multicultural societies, 9 (2), 264�283.

Joppke, C., 2004. The retreat of multiculturalism in the liberal state: theory and policy. British

journal of sociology, 55 (2), 237�257.

Joppke, C., 2008. Immigration and the identity of citizenship: the paradox of universalism.

Citizenship studies, 12 (6), 533�546.

Kelly, P., 2002. Between culture and equality. In: P. Kelly, ed. Multiculturalism reconsidered.

Cambridge: Polity.

Kivisto, P. and Faist, T., 2007. Citizenship: discourse, theory, and transnational prospects. London:

Blackwell.

Kohls, L.R. and Knight, J.M., 1994. Developing intercultural awareness. Boston, MA: Intercultural

Press.

Kymlicka, W., 1995. Multicultural citizenship. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Kymlicka, W., 2003. Multicultural states and intercultural citizens. Theory and research in education,

1, 147�169.

Kymlicka, W. 2005a. Testing the bounds of liberal multiculturalism. Draft paper presented at Toronto,

9 April.

Kymlicka, W., 2005b. The uncertain futures of multiculturalism. Canadian diversity, 4 (1), 82�85.

Kymlicka, W., 2007. The new debate on minority rights (and postscript). In: A.S. Laden and D.

Owen, eds. Multiculturalism and political theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

25�59.

Kyriakides, C., Virdee, S. and Modood, T., 2009. Racism, Muslims and the national imagination.

Journal of ethnic and migration studies, 35 (2), 289�308.

La Libre, 2005. 6 June.

Lentin, A., 2005. Replacing ‘race’, historizing the ‘culture’ in the multiculturalism. Patterns of

prejudice, 39 (4), 379�396.

Levey, G.B. ed., 2008. Political theory and Australian multiculturalism. New York: Berghahn Books.

Luctenberg, S., 2003. Citizenship education and diversity in Germany. In: J.A. Banks, ed. Diversity

and citizenship education: global perspectives. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Malik, M., 2007. Modernising discrimination law: proposals for a Single Equality Act for Britain.

International journal of discrimination and the law, 9 (2), 73�94.

May, S., Modood, T. and Squires, J., 2004. Ethnicity, nationalism, and minority rights. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press.

McGhee, D., 2008. The end of multiculturalism? Terrorism, integration & human rights. Maidenhead:

Open University Press and McGraw-Hill Education.

Meer, N., 2010. Citizenship, identity and the politics of multiculturalism. Basingstoke: Palgrave.

Meer, N., Dwyer, C. and Modood, T., 2010. Embodying Nationhood? Conceptions of British

national identity, citizenship and gender in the ‘veil affair’. The Sociological Review, 58 (1),

84�111.


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f B

rist

ol]

at 0

3:17

17

Apr

il 20

12

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2007/jun/17/religion

Meer, N. and Modood, T., 2009a. The multicultural state we are in: Muslims, ‘multiculture’ and the

‘civic re-balancing’ of British multiculturalism. Political studies, 57 (3), 473�497.

Meer, N. and Modood, T., 2009b. Refutations of racism in the ‘Muslim question’. Patterns of

prejudice, 43 (3�4), 332�351.

Modood, T., 1992. Not easy being British: colour, culture and citizenship. London: Runnymede Trust/

Trentham Books.

Modood, T., 2005. Multicultural politics. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Modood, T., 2006. The Liberal Dilemma: Integration or Vilification? International Migration, 44 (5),

4�7.

Modood, T., 2007a. Multiculturalism, a civic idea. London: Polity Press.

Modood, T. 2007b. Multiculturalism’s civic future: a response. Open democracy, 20 June. Available

from: http://www.opendemocracy.net/faith_ideas/Europe_islam/multiculturalism_future

[Accessed 19 June 2008].

Modood, T. and Meer, N. 2011. Framing contemporary citizenship and diversity in Europe. In: A.

Triandafyllidou, T., T. Modood and N. Meer, eds., European multiculturalisms: cultural,

religious and ethnic challenges. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Moller Okin, S. 1997. Is multiculturalism bad for women? Boston review debate, October�November.

Moore, C. 2006. How Cromwell gave us Joan Collins and other luminaries, Daily Telegraph, 17 June.

Available from: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml�/opinion/2006/06/17/

do1702.xml&sSheet�/opinion/2006/06/17/ixop.html [Accessed 13 July 2008].

Mouritsen, P., 2008. Political responses to cultural conflict: reflections on the ambiguities of the

civic turn. In: P. Mouritsen and K.E. Jørgensen, eds. Constituting communities: political

solutions to cultural conflict. London: Palgrave, 1�30.

NewStart Magazine, 2006. It’s all in the mix, 7 June.

Orgad, L., 2009. Cultural defense’ of nations: cultural citizenship in France, Germany and the

Netherlands. European law journal, 15 (6), 719�737.

Parekh, B., 2000. Rethinking multiculturalism: cultural diversity and political theory. London:

Palgrave.

Parekh, B., 2006. Europe, liberalism and the ‘Muslim question. In: T. Modood, A. Triandafyllidou

and R. Zapata Barrero, eds. Multiculturalism, Muslims and citizenship: a European approach.

London: Routledge.

Pearce, N., 2007. An ambiguous rescue. Multiculturalism and citizenship: responses to Tariq Modood.

Available from: http://www.opendemocracy.net/conflict-europe_islam/response_madood_

4630.jsp#two [Accessed 21 May 2007].

Pew Research, 2006. The great divide: how Westerners and Muslims view each other. Washington, DC:

The Pew Global Attitudes Project.

Phillips, A., 2007. Multiculturalism without culture. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Phillips, M., 2006. Londonistan: how Britain created a terror state within. London: Gibson Square

Books.

Policy Exchange, 2007. Living apart together: British Muslims and the paradox of multiculturalism.

London: Policy Exchange.

Prins, G. and Salisbury, R. 2008. Risk, threat and security � the case of the United Kingdom. RUSI

journal, 22�27.

Sandel, M., 1982. Liberalism and the limits of justice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Serwer, S. 2009. The ’00s: goodbye (at last) to the decade from Hell. Time magazine, 24 November.

Available from: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1942834,00.html

Smith, A.D., 1998. Nationalism and modernism: a critical survey of recent theories of nations and

nationalism. London: Routledge.


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f B

rist

ol]

at 0

3:17

17

Apr

il 20

12

http://www.opendemocracy.net/faith_ideas/Europe_islam/multiculturalism_future

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml&hairsp;=&hairsp;/opinion/2006/06/17/do1702.xml&sSheet&hairsp;=&hairsp;/opinion/2006/06/17/ixop.html










http://www.opendemocracy.net/conflict-europe_islam/response_madood_4630.jsp#two

http://www.opendemocracy.net/conflict-europe_islam/response_madood_4630.jsp#two

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1942834,00.html

Smith, J.I., 2004. Muslims as partners in interfaith encounter: models for dialogue. In: Z.H.

Bukhari, S.S. Nyang, M. Ahmad and J.L. Esposito, eds. Muslims’ place in the American public

square hope, fears, and aspirations. New York: Altamira Press.

Storti, C., 1994. Cross-cultural dialogues. Boston, MA: Intercultural Press.

Sze, F. and Powell, D. eds., 2004. Interculturalism: exploring critical issues. Oxford: Interdisciplinary

Press.

Taylor, C., 1992. The politics of recognition. In: A. Gutmann, ed. Multiculturalism and the politics of

recognition. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Talylot, C., 1989. Sources of the Self. Cambridge: CUP.

Toynbee, P. 2005. My right to offend a fool: race and religion are different � which is why

Islamophobia is a nonsense and religious hatred must not be outlawed, The Guardian, 10

June. Available from: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2005/jun/10/religion.political

columnists [Accessed 13 July 2008].

Triandafyllidou, A. and Gropas, R., 2011. Religious Diversity and Education: Intercultural and

Multicultural Concepts and Policies, In: A. Triandafyllidou, T. Modood and N. Meer, eds.

European Multiculturalisms: Cultural, Religious and Ethnic Challenges (EUP).

Trudeau, P. 1971. Statement to the House of Commons on multiculturalism, House of Commons,

Official Report of Debates, 28th Parliament, 3rd Session, 8 October, 8545�8546.

Tully, J., 2002. The illiberal liberal. In: P. Kelly, ed. Multiculturalism reconsidered. Cambridge: Polity.

Vertovec, S., 2007. Super-diversity and its implications. Ethnic and racial studies, 30 (6), 1024�1054.

Wood, P., Landry, C. and Bloomfield, J., 2006. Cultural diversity in Britain: a toolkit for cross-cultural

co-operation. York: Joseph Rowntree Foundation.

Young, I.M., 1990. Justice and the politics of difference. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f B

rist

ol]

at 0

3:17

17

Apr

il 20

12

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2005/jun/10/religion.politicalcolumnists

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2005/jun/10/religion.politicalcolumnists



Multiculturalism from Above andBelow: Analysing a Political DiscoursePnina Werbner

Available online: 16 Apr 2012

To cite this article: Pnina Werbner (2012): Multiculturalism from Above and Below: Analysing aPolitical Discourse, Journal of Intercultural Studies, 33:2, 197-209







http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07256868.2012.649527



Multiculturalism from Above andBelow: Analysing a Political Discourse1

Pnina Werbner

Meer and Modood have written an admirably lucid exposition of the political�philosophical case in defence of multiculturalism. Their critical evaluation of

interculturalism, a latecomer to the Anglo-American scholarly discourse on relations

among cultures in modern states, is convincing: interculturalism is not really a

political theory but refers to a mode of communication across ethnic or religious

divisions. A further theory not mentioned by the authors, but also invoked as an

alternative to the supposed multicultural tendency to essentialise or over-privilege

cultural boundaries and cultural closure, is cosmopolitanism. Hollinger, for example,

has argued that cosmopolitanism is neither universalist nor multiculturalist, but

espouses a ‘soft’ multiculturalism that is responsive to diversity, particularity, history,

the realities of power and the need for politically viable solidarities (2002: 228). Such

situated or grounded cosmopolitanism nevertheless recognises, Hollinger argues, that

cultures and groups change and evolve; they are not fixed and immutable forever

(2002: 228).

My own critical evaluation of Meer and Modood’s exposition starts from the

theoretical position that multiculturalism must be grasped as a discourse in which

scholars participate along with cultural actors, politicians and the media. Multi-

culturalism is, in other words, always positioned, invoked in defence of rights

(cultural, human) or in defence of communal solidarity, including that of the nation-

state. It is a discourse characterised by constant seepage across academia, the media,

politicians and ethnic-cum-religious public actors on whether multiculturalism is

‘good’ or ‘bad’, whether it has created ‘bridges’ (more solidarity) or ‘failed’ (and is

thus divisive). Multiculturalism is in this sense often a performative utterance, played

out in front of an audience hostile to immigrants, Islam or the West, or alternatively,

‘liberal’ or ‘cosmopolitan’, enjoying and embracing diversity.

If we accept my argument that multiculturalism is a discourse as well as a political

theory, we need to examine its affinities and differences from religious discourse.

Pnina Werbner is Professor Emerita of Social Anthropology, School of Sociology and Crimonology at Keele

University. Correspondence to: Pnina Werbner, Professor of Social Anthropology, Keele University, Keele, Staffs.

ST5 5BG, UK. Email: [email protected]



http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07256868.2012.649527


Vol. 33, No. 2, April 2012, pp. 197�209

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f B

rist

ol]

at 0

3:17

17

Apr

il 20

12

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07256868.2012.649527

The debates on multiculturalism in Europe today, including the UK, often focus

either explicitly or implicitly on Muslims and Islam, with Islam conceived of as a

‘culture’, leaving aside issues of religious tolerance and, indeed, inter-faith dialogue.

But is this sleight of hand legitimate philosophically? Are the discourses of religious

pluralism and multiculturalism identical? And if not, what distinguishes them? I start

with a brief overview of my understanding of the multicultural debate.

Culture, Clifford Geertz proposed, is a ‘‘system of symbols and meanings’’, which

he contrasted with norms, defined as oriented patterns for action (in Kuper 1999:

71). Against this American privileging of meaning, Durkheimian and Marxist

anthropological traditions have tended to regard culture with suspicion (Kuper 1999:

xiv), so that ‘‘British social anthropologists like Radcliffe-Brown and Evans-Pritchard

were dismissive of the notion of culture’’ (Kuper 1999: 58), conceiving anthropology

more as a form of comparative sociology (Kuper 1999: 129). Multicultural citizenship

has similarly had its sceptical critics and defenders. Much of the multicultural debate

at the turn of the century has focused on the politics of multicultural citizenship in

plural or immigrant societies, and concerns language or religious rights rather than

‘culture’ per se.

Critics of multiculturalism come from both the socialist Left and the liberal

Centre and Right. They include postmodern anthropologists, feminists and human

rights activists. They also, of course, include right-wing racists, traditionalists and

nationalists.

Anthropological critiques of multiculturalism start from its presumed false

theorisation of culture. Multiculturalism, anthropologists argue, reifies and essentia-

lises cultures as rigid, homogeneous and unchanging wholes with fixed boundaries

(Friedman 1997, Baumann 1999). It assumes a fixed connection between culture and

territory (Caglar 1997). Its political correctness glosses over internal social problems

within ethnic groups (Wikan 2002). Current theories in anthropology are based on

the idea that cultures are creative and changing, internally contested and hetero-

geneous. People in one culture constantly borrow from others. Cultures are therefore

inescapably hybrid and permeable. For this reason too, cultures do not have a single,

unified leadership and any attempt by the state to impose one is false and oppressive.

Critically also, diasporas have multiple and intersecting identities, including party

political affiliations to the left and right (Werbner 2002).

Against critics of multiculturalism, Terence Turner (1993: 412) has argued that

multiculturalism is a ‘critical’ rather than reifying discourse. The aporia that

disadvantaged groups (women, ethnic minorities) face in the political arena relates

to the definition of citizenship as the duty, qua citizen, to aim to transcend local

concerns so that particularistic claims to compensate for historical under-privilege are

often constructed as narrow, selfish and divisive. Hence, the challenge of the new

multicultural politics is how to transcend such constructions, to eliminate current

subordinations while stressing both universalism and difference (Modood and

Werbner 1997, Werbner and Modood 1997). In Quebec’s multicultural ‘minority

circuit’, activists ‘‘show themselves capable of . . . adopting a generic minority rights

198 P. Werbner

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f B

rist

ol]

at 0

3:17

17

Apr

il 20

12

rhetoric as an occupational vernacular’’ (Amit-Talai 1996: 106), but in suppress-

ing their particularistic cultural claims, they often fail to challenge the majority’s

hegemonic culture. Despite its morally grounded claims to separate cultural

sovereignty, Quebec remains a deeply racist society (Knowles 1996). Multiculturalism,

it is argued, thus co-opts leaders through minor investments. Feminists such as

Okin (1999) argue that multiculturalism accords too much power to religious

elders, usually men, to rule over women and their bodies, and to deny them their

rights as equal citizens to choose how to dress, who to marry or divorce, if and when to

have children, and so forth.

The argument in favour of multiculturalism put forward by liberal communitar-

ians like Charles Taylor (1994) is that identities are deeply grounded emotionally in

authentically specific cultures and moralities. To deny these is a form of offensive

discrimination; second, that a pragmatic resolution of individual vs. collective rights

is possible (Kymlicka 1995); third, that the public�private distinction is highly

ambiguous (Parekh 1995, Modood 1997a); and fourth, that many forms of racism,

such as anti-Semitism or Islamophobia, essentialise and biologise imputed cultural

traits. Hence, the distinction between race and culture is untenable in reality

(Modood 1997b). Indeed, multiculturalism without anti-racism does not make sense

as a radical political programme. The need is to recognise that the two struggles

are complementary rather than opposed (Blum 1994, Stolcke 1995). Racism denies

universal human commonalities beyond culture, and thus presumes the licence to

violate the symbolic and physical integrity of individuals and groups.

Tempelman (1999) distinguishes three forms of multiculturalism: ‘primordial’,

associated with Taylor; ‘civic’, associated with Parekh; and ‘universalist’, with

Kymlicka. While civic multiculturalism recognises that cultures are open, Tempelman

claims, it fails to resolve cases in which dialogue fails and the state invokes its

authority, as happened in the case of the The Satanic Verses affair in Britain or the

scarf affair in France. Multicultural confrontations sometimes seem intractable and

long term. The need is to distinguish therefore between multiculturalism-as-usual

(ethnic restaurants, carnivals and special arrangements for school meals, burial, etc.)

and what I have called ‘multiculturalism-in-history’ � unresolved conflicts that leave

a bitter and often lasting legacy (Werbner 2005).

In current human rights discourse, the right of individuals and collectivities to

foster, enhance and protect their culture and traditions is enshrined, but so too are

freedom of speech and freedom from violence, which deny the absolute right of

traditional practices, such as forced marriages or genital mutilation. Clearly, then,

multiculturalism is fraught with potential contradictions if too rigidly defined.

Anti-multiculturalist liberals argue that liberal democracy allows sufficient space for

ethnic and religious expression in civil society and the private sphere. Universal

individual rights to equality before the law are at risk if cultural rights are given

precedence. There is nothing to prevent ethnic or religious groups, they say, from

organising on a voluntary basis. However, as Talal Asad (1993), for example, has


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f B

rist

ol]

at 0

3:17

17

Apr

il 20

12

argued, minorities need protection from offensive symbolic as well as civic or

material exclusions and violations.

On the Left the argument is that the superficial celebration of multiculturalism �of exotic cuisines, popular music or colourful festivals and rituals � disguises ongoing

economic and political inequalities. Rather than addressing these, the state funds

multicultural festivals and turns its back on real problems of deprivation, preju-

dice and discrimination. Hence, multiculturalism and identity politics obscure the

common oppression of the under-privileged within capitalist society and divide anti-

racist movements (Sivanandan 1990). This debate, anti-racism vs. multiculturalism,

shared oppression vs. culture, obscures, however, as Anthias and Yuval-Davis (1992)

have pointed out, the divisive potential of equal opportunities policies.

Multiculturalism from Below

Critics on both Right and Left tend to assume that multiculturalism is a conspiracy

of top-down state engineering. Against that, my own argument has been that

multiculturalism in Britain, as applied to immigrant minorities rather than territorial

ones, is a politically and bureaucratically negotiated order, often at the local level,

responsive to ethnic grassroots pressure, budgetary constraints and demands for

redistributive justice. It is bottom-up rather than top-down; a politics of citizenship,

like other group politics (Werbner 2005). There is thus no single ‘just’ blueprint

for multiculturalism, even within a single country and certainly between countries

(Samad 1997).

Beyond the struggles for local recognition, multiculturalism has today become a

global movement against national assimilationist pressures (Nimni 2003). It refers to

different struggles by minorities demanding autonomy, recognition and a share

of state or local state budgets. The politics of multiculturalism in Botswana, for

example, denies Tswana right to absolute hegemony in the public sphere in the name

of nationalism (R. Werbner and Gaitskell 2002). Rather than thinking of multi-

culturalism, then, as a discourse that reifies culture, it needs to be thought of as a

politics of equal and just citizenship that bases itself on the right to be ‘different’

within a democratic political community. The political is a critical dimension of the

discourse of multiculturalism, both supporting and undermining it: the change in

legislation in Botswana allowing community radio and indigenous or local language

teaching in primary school has never been implemented. Without a struggle from

below, it seems it never will be.

The ‘Failure-of-Multiculturalism’ Discourse

In the face of alleged Muslim terror plots by young British, American or French-born

Muslims, the Sisyphean task facing national Muslim organisational leaders, of

counteracting the widespread public image of pervasive, hidden, Islamic terror, is

huge. Instead of lobbying for and promoting Islamic interests, they find themselves

200 P. Werbner

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f B

rist

ol]

at 0

3:17

17

Apr

il 20

12

and their organisations condemned by politicians and the media alike for their radical

roots and failure to promote diasporic Muslim integration and multiculturalism.

In this context, the ‘failure-of-multiculturalism’ discourse has taken root in Britain,

promoted by politicians, the media and academics, and is a central aspect of the

debate between Muslim leaders and British politicians. Bagguley and Hussain

describe this as a ‘‘wholesale rejection of the discourse of multiculturalism’’ (2008:

159). Hence the political call was for ‘community cohesion’. Multiculturalism-in-

history was inaugurated by the Rushdie affair. Alleging blasphemy punishable by

death, Muslims in Britain seemed deliberately to insist upon values alien to the

majority population. They burnt books and demanded the death of an author.

The 7 July 2005 London suicide bombings by young British Pakistanis were car-

ried out in the name of Islam and as retribution for the sufferings of Muslims in

Iraq, Afghanistan and the Middle East. Once again, this seemed to underline an

unbridgeable chasm between European values of citizenship and the rule of law, and

Muslims’ vengeful transnational politics. The Danish cartoon affair was yet another

manifestation of seemingly incommensurable values, this time in the field of art and

representation.

Like Muslims, diasporic Hindus and Sikhs have each in turn also sparked

apparently intractable multicultural conflicts in Britain. In the Sikh case, the conflict

surrounded a play, Behzti (Dishonour), written by a young Sikh woman, Gurpreet

Kaur Bhatti, which depicted the rape and murder of a young woman by a priest in

the Gurdwara (Sikh temple). Produced by Birmingham Repertory, the play was

cancelled after Sikhs responded with a massive show of public outrage and threatened

violence (Asthana 2004: 13). In the case of Hindus, the clash of values arose in

response to a solo exhibition by one of India’s most celebrated contemporary artists,

Maqbool Fida Husain, whose one-man retrospective in London included portrayals

of the goddesses Durga and Draupadi in the ‘‘characteristic nude imagery associated

with his work’’ (Khanna 2006: 2). Asia House Gallery withdrew the exhibition after

highly vocal protests by Hindu Human Rights, the National Council of Hindu

Temples and the Hindu Forum of Britain (Khanna 2006: 2).

The notion of multiculturalism-in-history is intended to separate day-to-day

tolerance of cultural diversity and arguments over minor state funding allocations

from exceptional cultural clashes that seem irresolvable. Historically, such confronta-

tions are usually never resolved; they only ‘go away’, entering the collective sub-

consciousness of a community as a bitter sediment. This was certainly true

of the Rushdie affair. The 2007 award of a knighthood to Salman Rushdie, almost

20 years after the confrontation over The Satanic Verses, ignited once again the

bitterness British Muslims felt over the affair, despite their muted public response.

Religion vs. Culture

Debates on multiculturalism often lead to an intellectual cul-de-sac. Detractors

typically argue that culture is not identical with community; it is not a bounded or


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f B

rist

ol]

at 0

3:17

17

Apr

il 20

12

territorialised entity; it cannot be reified since it is constantly changing and

hybridising, an ‘open text’. While such deconstructive arguments are undeniable,

they evade the question, first, of why certain issues evoke such passionate

commitment and sharp disagreement, and, linked to that, is it accurate to speak of

culture, when at issue are historical conflicts sparked by deeply felt religious feelings,

in confrontation with liberal secularism or Western geopolitics? David Cameron, then

leader of the opposition party in Britain, was able to say in the same breath, we will

support the Notting Hill carnival (a cultural event), we reject multiculturalism as a

failed policy. Carnival ‘culture’ is seemingly innocuous and non-polemical, neither

race, ethnic chauvinism or religion; hence, an acceptable idiom in which to describe

‘difference’ in neutral terms. However, when talking about multiculturalism and its

failures, more often than not the underlying attack turns out to be against diasporic

Muslims’ alleged self-segregation in social ghettoes or their ‘extremist’ defence of

their religious commitments (there are countries, of course, in which language has

the same effect). The fact that the underlying problematic of religion is not

acknowledged publicly in Britain (as it might be in South Asia) so that ‘culture’

becomes a euphemism for religion or community entangles government ministers

and opposition leaders alike in strange contradictions of which they seem entirely

unaware.

Much of the discourse on multiculturalism assumes, unreflectively, that the

cultures of minorities, defined in the broadest sense of the term to include religion,

can be made to disappear by fiat if politicians and policymakers refuse to support

them, either rhetorically, on official occasions, or with small dollops of cash. While

defending multiculturalism, Meer and Modood implicitly make the same assump-

tion. In reality, however, the very opposite has often been the case historically.

The cultures of minorities are strengthened by the need to mobilise internally

for the sake of culture or religion in the absence of public funding. Singling out

Muslim religious associations for censure as British politicians have chosen to do

arguably merely legitimises their representative status in the eyes of the public they

serve.

As a minority, it makes sense for Pakistanis in Britain to highlight their religious

identity in civil society and the public sphere: first, because as pious believers this is

their most valued, high-cultural identity; but importantly also, there are in Britain

laws that set out entitlements for religious groups. Among these are the right to

found voluntary-aided state schools, supported by government funds; the right to

worship, to build places of worship and so forth. Oddly enough, despite periodic

invocations of the failure of multiculturalism, there are no laws in the UK that

enshrine the cultures of immigrants, though limited legal rights to cultural, political

and territorial autonomy have been granted to Wales, Scotland and Northern

Ireland.2 In other words, multicultural citizenship in Britain, as elsewhere, recognises

the rights of indigenous territorialised peoples and settled minorities, aboriginals,

Native Americans and so forth, to a measure of self-rule, autonomy and formal

representation in the public sphere. Only secondarily does multicultural citizenship

202 P. Werbner

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f B

rist

ol]

at 0

3:17

17

Apr

il 20

12

apply to immigrant minorities not settled territorially. The UK Race Relations Act

protects ethnic and racial minorities � and this includes most Muslims. The recent

law against incitement to religious hatred goes some way to protect Muslims against

extreme religious offence or vilification. On purely pragmatic grounds, then,

immigrants fighting to gain equal rights in the UK will choose to struggle in arenas

where there already exist established rights, some of which are denied them. In such

cases, there is no need to establish the ground rules and principles; merely to insist on

their universal application.

Unlike hegemonic nationalism, multiculturalism’s innovation as a philosophical

movement is that it applies to all citizens, even the majority. However, in a further

twist that highlights the ambiguity of the culture concept, young Muslims themselves

are rejecting their parental culture and tradition, in a paradoxical move that seems to

deny culture in the name of religion.

Religious vs. Multicultural Discourses

Islamists in Britain and elsewhere deny the validity of local cultures (see Roy 2004).

This raises an interesting question: can there be a religion that is not also cultural?

Pakistanis reiterate that Islam is a whole, all-inclusive, way of life, and this indeed

was the argument put forward by the Muslims of India in claiming a national

homeland for the Muslims of the subcontinent. However, if Islam is a whole way of

life, then surely it refers to the customs and traditions of particular localities? In a

sense, both claims are equally dubious: religion is not the same as culture, at least not

in the modern world, but nor is it entirely separable from it. Islamism may reject the

Pakistani-style chiffon headscarf, but it substitutes for it another head covering that

becomes over time a uniform, that is, a custom. This custom can, however, be shared

by persons from different places and backgrounds.

Nevertheless, I believe that it makes sense to distinguish between culture and

religion, in a way that an Islamist does. This is because, as discursive formations they

are not the same, and particularly so in the case of the three monotheistic religions.

In these, religious belief is about a relationship with a transcendent being that

demands conviction and commitment, experienced in highly emotional ways. It may

be, as Durkheim famously argued in the Elementary Forms of Religious Life, that God

is merely the embodiment of community; and it is probably true that culture, in

the sense of language, but also law, morality, food, music, art, architecture, spices

and perfumes, clothing and so forth, also embodies a community � though not

necessarily the same one. However, religion and culture are not the same for the

simple reason that cultural practices are not hedged in a similar way with sacred

taboos, dangerous no-go areas. Culture is not pitted against moral transgressions and

ethical violations, although those who perform it badly can be laughed at for their

gaucheness. Religion is threatened by believers’ internal doubt, which may or may not

be fuelled by externally inspired scepticism. Culture is threatened by the physical

destruction of objects or buildings, by forgetfulness, and perhaps more than anything


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f B

rist

ol]

at 0

3:17

17

Apr

il 20

12

in the modern world, by radical dislocations and changes in social organisation.

A person may have multiple cultural competences, and switch between them

situationally, or she may be a cultural hybrid, the product of even or uneven fusions

of two or more cultural worlds. There have been periods in the history of religion

when boundaries between, for example, Islam and Hinduism in South Asia, or

Judaism and Christianity in the Near East, were blurred (for a discussion see Werbner

2009a). However, in the modern world it would seem odd to be a Muslim, a Jew and

a Christian simultaneously, however syncretic one’s faith.

The gap between culture and religion raises the question of what exactly is meant

by multiculturalism in Britain? Whereas cultural ‘traditions’ may be open to

negotiation in the diasporic context, religious customs anchored in Holy writ and

said to originate in a transcendental covenant, may be conceived of by believers as

non-negotiable. When encapsulated religious minorities negotiate a place in their

new nation with the majority society, the more pious among them insist on the

religious basis of customs (such as veiling) that in reality may have evolved

historically. Culture for them assumes the aura of divine commandment, impervious

to politicians’ invocations of ‘community cohesion’.

The problematic tendency to conflate religion and culture in debates on

multiculturalism and identity politics in the UK includes academic defenders

of multiculturalism as religion such as Modood (2005) or Parekh (2000) as well as

their critics on the left (e.g. Yuval-Davis 1997). The ‘‘mystification of culture’’ as

Bhatt (2006: 99) calls it, conflating religious pluralism with identity politics,

imperceptively merges two quite separate, historically constructed discourses (Asad

2003). On the one hand, a discourse on religion that recognises that modern religions

are institutionalised, bounded and textualised, even if subject to constant internal

divisions and schismatic tendencies, more or less ‘extreme’, ‘doctrinaire’ or

‘humanist-liberal’; ‘pure’ or ‘syncretic’, ‘relaxed’; based on ‘universalistic’ or

‘particularistic’ interpretations; and, on the other hand, a discourse on ‘culture’

that recognises its fuzzy, historically changing, situational, hybridising and unre-

flective aspects. Arguably, issues usually regarded as a matter of multicultural policy,

for example, the dispensation to wear exotic headdresses to school or work (turbans,

veils, skullcaps) more rightly belong in the constitutional domain of religious

pluralism. Cultural conventions on headdress, which do not carry that non-

negotiable imperative quality, can be ignored.

Politicians would naturally like the Muslims of Britain to be contained within the

envelope of the nation-state, to live scattered among the wider population and to be

concerned mainly with religious education and pastoral care. They reject not only

the extreme religiosity of many Muslims, including the second generation, but their

enclaved living and diasporic commitments � not just to their country of origin but

to Muslim communities elsewhere, especially Palestine, but also Iraq. They demand a

non-politicised religion, which they label ‘culture’. In addition, because Muslims in

Britain are far more pious than most other British citizens and are equally emotional

about their transnational loyalties, then it seems multiculturalism has not only failed

204 P. Werbner

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f B

rist

ol]

at 0

3:17

17

Apr

il 20

12

but supposedly foments hatred and division. Of course, at another level everyone �Muslims and non-Muslims alike � shares the knowledge that intractable international

conflicts are impinging on the consciousness of young Muslims in Britain and

encouraging a few of them towards � in their own eyes � heroic deeds of self-sacrifice,

which to everyone else appear as unacceptable atrocities. How to reach these young

people is a predicament shared by all British citizens, including Muslims. In a sense,

too, it may well be that politicians feel on safer ground when they criticise religion,

even if they label it ‘culture’. They know from their own experience of European

history that religion can be more or less extreme, more or less tolerant, more or less

politicised, more or less individualised and private. Second, the term culture is also

used to imply ‘community’: ethnic communities are expected by British politicians to

exert moral control over their members. The failure of the Muslim community in

Britain to control some of its youngsters is a failure of community and hence also of

culture and multiculturalism.

Clearly, it is absurd to believe that the paltry sums of money given by the

government to Muslim organisations whose members are, after all, tax payers, can

shake the foundations of Muslim faith in Britain. Muslims raise vast sums of money

in voluntary donations, running into millions of pounds each year, for charitable

causes and communal projects like mosque building. For the latter, they also

sometimes access overseas donations. No politician can determine the continued

existence of Islam in Britain. The only use multicultural and multi-faith state or local-

state funding can have is positive: to require that organisations service a wider range

of ethnic minority users than their own internal fundraising would demand; to create

alliances, to enter into dialogue with unlikely partners, to engage in joint efforts with

other groups in order to provide help and services to the needy. Rather than

fomenting hatred, state multiculturalism from above is designed to attenuate

divisions between ethnic and religious groups and propel them into dialogue.

The aim of multiculturalism from above is thus greater interculturalism! However, no

amount of state funding can stop groups from asserting their diasporic loyalty and

sense of co-responsibility vis-a-vis diasporas beyond the nation-state in which they

have settled. World politics, not religion per se, are at the heart of the current

multicultural debate.

In a sense, the failure-of-multiculturalism discourse is thus meant to remind

minorities that there are no no-go areas within the diaspora that are closed to the

press and media. Double talk � one message for them, one for us � is from now

onwards unacceptable. The political thrust is towards an open, transparent multi-

culturalism, legitimising press undercover reporting or engagement with spaces

hidden from the public eye, and cultural-cum-religious intercultural debates with

minorities on their own ground, sometimes on quite arcane issues, such as the

writings of Mawdudi, on media websites or in the ethnic press (see Werbner 2009b).

The question is whether this constant digging beneath the surface � the day-to-day

media reporting on Muslim seditious plots and plotters, Muslim opinion polls that

reveal out-of-line opinions and conspiracy theories, tirades by politicians against


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f B

rist

ol]

at 0

3:17

17

Apr

il 20

12

so-called multiculturalism, or the invocations by politicians of the need to ‘learn’ to

be good citizens � is in any way conducive towards a more positive integration of

Muslims into British society? Such rhetorical attacks on a daily basis, many via the

media, surely lead to a sense of siege and alienation among the vast majority of law-

abiding Muslims, whatever their political sentiments.

The introduction of new discourses may disrupt ‘‘established assumptions

structuring debates in the public sphere’’ (Asad 2003: 186). In this respect, the

discursive attack on multiculturalism may be conceived of as a rejection by British

politicians and the media of the invasion of religious discourses into the public

sphere: faith and passion do not belong in a space of rational argumentation,

economics and politics (Asad 2003: 187). The reasoned responses of Muslim leaders

however, utilising the national platform of their own ethnic press, has carved out

a space of intercultural civility in which they argue against allegations of extremism

passionately and yet rationally (Werbner 2009b).

A New Kind of Multiculturalism?

While much of the failure-of-multiculturalism discourse since 2000 has focused on

the concern with the ‘non-integration’ of the Muslim minority, some features of the

old state multicultural policy have always been unsatisfactory, especially the tendency

to recruit representative delegates from each ethnic or religious group to sit on

representative race and community relations councils. Against this, a ‘new’ public

sector multiculturalism of consultation and participation has emerged in Britain,

grounded in quite a different discourse. It makes no assumptions about the pre-

existence of bounded communities. Instead, it creates vast lists of organisations that

are invited in massive numbers to participate in public forums. In the case of

London, for example, the organisations communicate through email with govern-

ment agencies, the NHS, the Local Authority, the GLA and directly with each other.

Their paid staff is multi-ethnic, as is the client population. While divisions tend to

surface whenever ‘representative’ committees are set up across the whole black and

ethnic minority population, cooperation and inclusive networks are likely to emerge

and produce effective solidarity in narrower constituencies � and especially when it

comes to the fair distribution of resources and jobs.

Our recent research on the black African diaspora in London disclosed the capacity

of the African elite in civil society to create and sustain amicable inter-ethnic

networks across the whole African diaspora, informed by a sense of justice, fairness

and cooperation (see Werbner 2010). Elite Africans meet on many occasions �in public forums, workshops, parties, policy meetings, committees and advisory

groups � some initiated by government, some by their national embassies or high

commissions, and some by their own associations. Many have rubbed shoulders with

the Great and the Good, including the leaders of their own countries. They are

invited to receptions in Downing Street or the House of Commons, have advised

ministers and the Mayor of London and sit on key Local Authority advisory groups.

206 P. Werbner

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f B

rist

ol]

at 0

3:17

17

Apr

il 20

12

This, despite the fact that in some cases their work is voluntary and unpaid. It is

particularly the consultation and participation in forums that points to the

emergence of a new kind of more inclusive multiculturalism in Britain, a feature

of elite networking in a more open, participatory environment.

Conclusion

I have argued in this paper that multiculturalism is a political discourse that is always

positioned. Augmenting Meer and Modood’s consideration of the merits of

multiculturalism vs. interculturalism, I highlight the central role that multicultur-

alism from above can play, at least in Britain, in facilitating, indeed requiring,

intercultural or inter-faith openness and dialogue. It is thus extremely counter-

productive, I argue, that politicians tend to use multiculturalism as a euphemism for

immigration or extremism. All they achieve by the failure-of-multiculturalism

discourse is a growing sense of alienation among religious and ethnic minorities

who in any case rely on autonomous internal resources to perpetuate their culture

and religion and create ‘community’.

Notes

[1] This paper draws upon Werbner (2009b, 2010, 2011).

[2] The amended British Nationality Act, 2005 requiring persons seeking naturalisation to have a

minimal knowledge of English may be classed as a ‘multicultural’ law perhaps.

Works Cited

Amit-Talai, V., 1996. The minority circuit: Kashtin, the media and the Oka crisis. In: V. Amit-Talai

and C. Knowles, eds. Re-situating identities: the politics of race, ethnicity, culture. Ontario:

Broadview Press, 89�114.

Anthias, F. and Yuval-Davis, N., 1992. Racialized boundaries. London: Routledge.

Asad, T., 1993. Genealogies of religion. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Asad, T., 2003. Formations of the secular: Christianity, Islam, modernity. Stanford, CA: Stanford

University Press.

Asthana, A., 2004. Tempest of rage shakes Sikh temple, The Observer, 26 December, p. 13.

Bagguley, P. and Hussain, Y., 2008. Riotous citizens: ethnic conflict in multicultural Britain. Aldershot:

Ashgate.

Baumann, G., 1999. The multicultural riddle. London: Routledge.

Bhatt, C., 2006. The fetish of the margins: religious absolutism, anti-racism and postcolonial

silence. New formations, 59, 98�115.

Blum, L., 1994. Multiculturalism, racial justice and community: reflections on Charles Taylor’s

‘‘Politics of Recognition’’. In: L. Foster and P. Herzog, eds. Defending diversity. Amherst:

University of Massachusetts Press, 175�206.

Caglar, A.S., 1997. Hyphenated identities and the limits of ‘culture’. In: T. Modood and P. Werbner,

eds. The politics of multiculturalism in the New Europe. London: Zed Books.

Friedman, J., 1997. Global crises, the struggle for cultural identity and intellectual porkbarrelling.

In: T. Modood and P. Werbner, eds. The politics of multiculturalism in the New Europe.

London: Zed Books.


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f B

rist

ol]

at 0

3:17

17

Apr

il 20

12

Hollinger, D.A., 2002. Not universalists, not pluralists: the new cosmopolitans find their own way.

In: S. Vertovec and R. Cohen, eds. Conceiving cosmopolitanism: theory, context and practice.

Oxford: Oxford University Press, 227�239.

Khanna, A., 2006. Naked gods are found!, Eastern Eye, 19 May, p. 2.

Knowles, C., 1996. Racism, biography, and psychiatry. In: V. Amit-Talai and C. Knowles, eds.

Re-situating identities: the politics of race, ethnicity, culture. Ontario: Broadview Press.

Kuper, A., 1999. Culture: the anthropologists’ account. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Kymlicka, W., 1995. Multicultural citizenship. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Modood, T., 1997a. ‘Difference’, cultural racism and anti-racism. In: T. Modood and P. Werbner,

eds. The politics of multiculturalism in the New Europe. London: Zed Books.

Modood, T., 1997b. Introduction: the politics of multiculturalism in the New Europe. In:

T. Modood and P. Werbner, eds. The politics of multiculturalism in the New Europe. London:

Zed Books, 1�26.

Modood, T., 2005. Multicultural politics: racism, ethnicity and Muslims in Britain. Edinburgh:

Edinburgh University Press.

Modood, T. and Werbner, P., eds., 1997. The politics of multiculturalism in the New Europe. London:

Zed Books.

Nimni, E., 2003. Introduction. In: E. Nimni, ed. The challenge of post-Zionism. London: Zed Books.

Okin, S., 1999. Is multiculturalism bad for women? Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Parekh, B., 1995. The concept of national identity. New community, 21 (2), 255�268.

Parekh, B., 2000. Rethinking multiculturalism. London: Macmillan.

Roy, O., 2004. Globalised Islam: the search for a new Ummah. London: Hurst.

Samad, Y., 1997. The plural guises of multiculturalism: conceptualising a fragmented paradigm.

In: T. Modood and P. Werbner, eds. The politics of multiculturalism in the New Europe.

London: Zed Books.

Sivanandan, A., 1990. Communities of resistance. London: Verso.

Stolcke, V., 1995. Talking culture: new boundaries, new rhetorics of exclusion in Europe. Current

anthropology, 36 (1), 1�22.

Taylor, C., 1994. Examining the politics of recognition. In: A. Gutmann, ed. Multiculturism.

Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 25�74.

Tempelman, S., 1999. Constructions of cultural identity: multiculturalism and exclusion. Political

studies, XL VII, 17�29.

Turner, T., 1993. Anthropology and multiculturalism: what is anthropology that multiculturalists

should be mindful of it? Cultural anthropology, 8 (4), 411�429.

Werbner, P., 2002. Imagined diasporas among Manchester Muslim. Oxford: James Currey; Sante Fe:

SAR.

Werbner, P., 2004. Theorising complex diasporas: purity and hybridity in the South Asian public

sphere in Britain [Special issue: Islam, transnationalism and the public sphere in Western

Europe]. Journal of ethnic and migration studies, 30 (5), 895�911.

Werbner, P., 2005. The translocation of culture: ‘community cohesion’ and the force of

multiculturalism in history. Sociological review, 53 (4), 745�768.

Werbner, P., 2009a. Religious identity. In: M. Wetherell and C. Talpade Mohanty, eds. The Sage

handbook of identities. London: Sage, 231�257.

Werbner, P., 2009b. Revisiting the UK Muslim diasporic public sphere at a time of terror: from local

(benign) invisible spaces to seditious conspiratorial spaces and the ‘failure of multi-

culturalism’ discourse. South Asian diaspora, 1 (1), 19�45.

Werbner, P., 2010. Many gateways to the gateway city: elites, class, and policy networking in the

London African diaspora [Special issue]. African diaspora, 3 (1�2), 132�159.

Werbner, P., 2011. Multiculturalism. In: A. Barnard and J. Spencer, eds. Encyclopedia of social and

cultural anthropology. London: Routledge.

208 P. Werbner

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f B

rist

ol]

at 0

3:17

17

Apr

il 20

12

Werbner, P. and Modood, T., eds., 1997. Debating cultural hybridity: multi-cultural identities and the

politics of anti-racism. London: Zed Books.

Werbner, R. and Gaitskell, D., eds., 2002. Minorities and citizenship in Botswana [Special issue].

Journal of Southern African studies, 28 (4).

Wikan, U., 2002. Generous betrayal: politics of culture in the New Europe. Chicago: University of

Chicago Press.

Yuval-Davis, N., 1997. Ethnicity, gender relations and multiculturalism. In: P. Werbner and

T. Modood, eds. Debating cultural hybridity: multi-cultural identities and the politics of

anti-racism. London: Zed Books, 193�208.


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f B

rist

ol]

at 0

3:17

17

Apr

il 20

12



Comment on Meer and ModoodWill Kymlicka


To cite this article: Will Kymlicka (2012): Comment on Meer and Modood, Journal of InterculturalStudies, 33:2, 211-216







http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07256868.2012.649528



Comment on Meer and ModoodWill Kymlicka

Academic and public debates go through cycles, and one of the current fashions is to

defend a (new, innovative, realistic) ‘interculturalism’ against a (tired, discredited,

naive) ‘multiculturalism’. As Meer and Modood show, there is very little intellectual

substance underlying this fad. It is not based on a careful conceptual analysis of

the principles or presuppositions of the two approaches, but rather rests on a crude

misrepresentation, even caricature, of multiculturalist theories and approaches.

Nor is it based on a systematic empirical comparison of the actual policy outcomes

associated with the two approaches, since defenders of interculturalism rarely make

clear how their policy recommendations would differ from those defended by

multiculturalists. As a result, the ‘good interculturalism vs. bad multiculturalism’

literature is essentially rhetorical rather than analytical, and we do not have a clear

basis for judging how interculturalism differs from multiculturalism, if at all.

As a long-time defender of multiculturalism, I am not exactly a disinterested

observer of this debate, and so unsurprisingly, I share Meer and Modood’s frustration

with this new fad and agree with their analysis of its limitations. Indeed, I am tempted

to buttress their argument by providing further examples of the intellectual weakness

of recent claims regarding the superiority of interculturalism over multiculturalism.

Consider, for example, the influential 2008 ‘‘White Paper on Intercultural Dialogue’’

from the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe. It argues that inter-

culturalism should be the preferred model for Europe because multiculturalism has

failed:

In what became the western part of a divided post-war Europe, the experienceof immigration was associated with a new concept of social order known asmulticulturalism. This advocated political recognition of what was perceived as thedistinct ethos of minority communities on a par with the ‘host’ majority. While thiswas ostensibly a radical departure from assimilationism, in fact multiculturalismfrequently shared the same, schematic conception of society set in opposition ofmajority and minority, differing only in endorsing separation of the minority from

Will Kymlicka holds the Canada Research Chair in Political Philosophy at Queen’s University and is a visiting

professor in the Nationalism Studies programme at the Central European University in Budapest. His works have

been translated into 30 languages. He has served as President of the American Society for Political and Legal

Philosophy (2004�2006). Correspondence to: Professor Will Kymlicka, Department of Philosophy, Watson Hall

Office #313, Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada K7L 3N6. Email: [email protected]



http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07256868.2012.649528


Vol. 33, No. 2, April 2012, pp. 211�216

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f B

rist

ol]

at 0

3:17

17

Apr

il 20

12

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07256868.2012.649528

the majority rather than assimilation to it . . . Whilst driven by benign intentions,multiculturalism is now seen by many as having fostered communal segregationand mutual incomprehension, as well as having contributed to the undermining ofthe rights of individuals � and, in particular, women � within minority communi-ties, perceived as if these were single collective actors. The cultural diversity ofcontemporary societies has to be acknowledged as an empirical fact. However,a recurrent theme of the consultation was that multiculturalism was a policy withwhich respondents no longer felt at ease. (Council of Europe 2008: 18)

The intercultural approach, it argues, avoids these failed extremes of assimilation

and multiculturalism, by both acknowledging diversity while insisting on universal

values:

Unlike assimilation, [the intercultural approach] recognises that public authoritiesmust be impartial, rather than accepting a majority ethos only, if communalisttensions are to be avoided. Unlike multiculturalism, however, it vindicates acommon core which leaves no room for moral relativism. (Council of Europe2008: 20)

All of this repeats the tropes that Meer and Modood identify in the literature. And

as they would predict, it does so without a shred of evidence. The White Paper gives

no examples of multiculturalist policies in post-war Europe that were premised

on moral relativism, and it does not cite any evidence that the problems of social

segregation or gender inequality are worse in European countries that embraced

multiculturalism than in those countries that rejected multiculturalism. This is not

surprising since, as I have argued elsewhere, there is no evidence for this claim.1 And

as Meer and Modood would predict, its defence of interculturalism stays at such a

level of generality that it is impossible to tell which real-world multiculturalist

policies it would reject.

In all of these respects, the White Paper nicely illustrates the Meer and Modood

analysis, as yet one more example of the intellectual feebleness of the literature.2

However, I mention the White Paper not to support their analysis, but rather to

suggest its limits, and perhaps even its futility. In light of the White Paper, and related

documents, we need to step back and ask deeper questions about the political context

within which these debates take place, and about how progressive intellectuals can

constructively intervene in them. The sort of analysis provided by Meer and Modood

is intellectually sound, but I fear it is politically inert.

To understand the problem, it’s worth pausing to consider how remarkable the

2008 White Paper is. The White Paper was approved by the Council of Ministers

representing all the member states of the Council of Europe, and the Paper itself is

derived from consultations with policymakers in the member states. Therefore, we

have here an official statement by a pan-European organisation stating that it is the

consensus of member states that multiculturalism has failed. In addition, note that

this was in 2008. When Cameron, Merkel or Sarkozy made such claims in early 2011,

this was considered newsworthy, although critics suggested there were clear partisan

212 W. Kymlicka

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f B

rist

ol]

at 0

3:17

17

Apr

il 20

12

political agendas underlying these claims by right-wing politicians. However, the

claim that multiculturalism has failed had already been endorsed in 2008 by

all member states, whether governed by left-wing or right-wing parties, whether

traditionally pro-multicultural (like Britain or the Netherlands) or anti-multicultural

(like France or Greece). There was a clear political consensus that we need a post-

multicultural alternative, to be called ‘interculturalism’.

Moreover, this is not just a European phenomenon. When UNESCO prepared its

2008 ‘‘World Report on Cultural Diversity’’, it too started from the premise that there

was a consensus on the need for a post-multiculturalist alternative at the global level,

which it too framed in the language of interculturalism (UNESCO 2008). Both the

Council of Europe and UNESCO have historically been seen as standard-bearers

for multiculturalism, yet as of 2008 both had declared the need to shift from

multiculturalism to interculturalism.

How should we respond to such documents? One response, consistent with the

Meer and Modood analysis, is to ask whether the White Paper or the World Report

provides any good arguments or evidence for the claim that interculturalism is

superior to multiculturalism. For example, when the White Paper claims that post-

war Western Europe embraced relativist and segregationist multiculturalism, we

certainly want to know if that is a fair characterisation or not. And here I agree with

Meer and Modood that it is not a fair or accurate characterisation: indeed, it utterly

strains all credibility (for my own critique of these mischaracterisations, see Kymlicka

2007: chaps. 2�4).

However, this just pushes the puzzle back a level: why would policymakers from

across Europe endorse this caricature? One possibility is that this is a sincere error,

due perhaps to misinformation or inadequate research, and that if we bring this error

to light, the member states of the Council of Europe and UNESCO might reconsider

their recommendation to shift from multiculturalism to interculturalism.

It’s not clear if Meer and Modood believe something like this is possible, but

in my view, it is implausible. I suspect that the authors of the White Paper and

UNESCO World Report � along with the policymakers they consulted � are already

aware that they are presenting a caricature. Alternatively, perhaps more accurately,

I suspect they are not particularly concerned one way or the other about whether

their characterisation is fair or accurate. The ‘interculturalism as a remedy for failed

multiculturalism’ trope is not really intended to offer an objective social science

account of our situation, but rather, I believe, is intended to serve as a new narrative,

or if you like, a new myth. As I read these reports,3 the authors have concluded that it

is politically useful to construct a new narrative in which interculturalism emerges

in Europe from the failed extremes of assimilation and multiculturalism. Such a

narrative, they believe, can better sustain public support for progressive agendas and

inclusive politics. Like all such narratives or myths, it is intended to enable certain

political projects, while disabling others, and the Council of Europe and UNESCO

authors believe that this new narrative can enable inclusive politics while disabling

xenophobic politics.


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f B

rist

ol]

at 0

3:17

17

Apr

il 20

12

Viewed this way � as an enabling political myth � I think that the interculturalism

position is interesting and important. Viewed as an objective social scientific analysis,

it is intellectually weak, and often fails to meet even minimal standards of academic

rigour or objectivity. As noted earlier, it is highly rhetorical rather than analytical.

However, I suggest we should take it seriously precisely as a form of political rhetoric,

or if you like, a form of political theatre. It is an attempt to tell a story that can revive

the flagging political commitment to diversity. Across Europe, and around the world,

we see popular discontent with diversity, but this new narrative tells people that their

discontent is not with diversity as such, but with a misguided and naive ‘multi-

culturalism’. Multiculturalism is offered up as a sacrificial lamb, a handy scapegoat for

popular discontent, in the hope that this will undercut support for populist, anti-

immigrant or anti-Roma, xenophobic parties. The narrative says ‘‘don’t take your

frustrations out on minorities; your objection is not to diversity, which is a good thing,

but to the extreme multiculturalist ideology that we have now safely put behind us’’.

Viewed as a social science diagnosis of popular discontent, this is radically

implausible. The evidence suggests that popular discontent with immigrants is in fact

higher in countries that didn’t embrace multiculturalism, and there’s no evidence that

adopting multiculturalism policies causes or exacerbates anti-immigrant or anti-

minority attitudes. The authors of these reports sometimes reveal their awareness that

their narrative is stretching the facts.4 However, viewed as a political myth, it may not

be so implausible. Something needs to be done to bolster the flagging commitment to

diversity in Europe, and drawing a rhetorical contrast between a new interculturalism

and an old multiculturalism may be politically effective, at least in some contexts.

And precisely because the contract is rhetorical rather than real, policymakers can

still retain much or all of what they adopted as multiculturalism, and simply re-label

it as interculturalism.5

There are risks associated with this strategy. The interculturalists may think

that they are defending diversity, but their crude anti-multiculturalist rhetoric may

simply play into the hands of xenophobes who reject both multiculturalism and

interculturalism. Since much of the anti-multiculturalist discourse in Europe is a

thinly veiled form of racism and xenophobia, for the Council of Europe and UNESCO

to also play the anti-multiculturalist card risks licensing and legitimating anti-

diversity views. And while interculturalism is intended to offer a clear contrast with

assimilation, it is so vague that assimilationist policies can be defended in the name

of ‘interculturalism’. Therefore, the rhetoric of interculturalism may not provide an

effective check on either xenophobia or assimilationism. For these and other reasons,

I am not particularly optimistic about this strategy. However, even if the inter-

culturalist strategy is dangerous and improbable, it may still be a better political bet

than attempting to defend diversity in the name of multiculturalism. The fact is that

multiculturalism has been demonised perhaps beyond repair in many countries.

To be sure, these political calculations are likely to vary from country to country.

Where multiculturalism has not yet become a poisoned term � as I think is still true

in my own country of Canada6 � I would argue that the fight for diversity can and

214 W. Kymlicka

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f B

rist

ol]

at 0

3:17

17

Apr

il 20

12

should still be fought in the name of multiculturalism. And this means tackling head-

on the myths and the misrepresentations, in just the way that Meer and Modood

do in their paper. However, I fear that in many countries, fighting for diversity in

the name of multiculturalism may be a political non-starter. In any event, that seems

to be the judgement of many of the experts, practitioners and policymakers whose

views are reflected in the Council of Europe and UNESCO reports. As I noted earlier,

we can dismiss the anti-multiculturalist grandstanding of right-wing politicians like

Cameron, Merkel and Sarkozy. However, many authors of the Council of Europe and

UNESCO reports have a genuine commitment to diversity. And, as I read them, they

have made a judgement that in order to preserve the commitment to diversity, we

need to drop the poisoned term of multiculturalism, and to engage in a conscious act

of political mythmaking in which interculturalism emerges to rescue us from the

failed extremes of assimilationism and multiculturalism.

I think we need to take that judgement seriously. And so we may want to ask, not

whether ‘interculturalism as a remedy for failed multiculturalism’ is a sound scientific

analysis (it isn’t), but whether it offers a compelling political narrative that can

potentially sustain a flagging commitment to diversity. I’m far from convinced it can,

but then again it’s far from clear what the alternative strategy is for addressing

popular discontent with diversity.

In any event, this seems to me to be the real question to ask of the interculturalism

vs. multiculturalism trope. It’s important to be aware of the misinterpretations and

conceptual ambiguities pointed out by Meer and Modood, but recognising the

mythical quality of the trope is, from my perspective, just the start of the analysis.

We now need to ask what work this myth can do, for whom, in which contexts, and

how this compares with alternative strategies for addressing popular discontents.

And in so far as we think there is a potentially enabling political myth here, at least

in countries where multiculturalism has been demonised beyond rehabilitation,

progressive intellectuals may decide to invest their energies, not in deflating the myth,

but rather in making it work.

Notes

[1] To state the obvious, countries that have embraced multiculturalism are not ethnic utopias,

and they confront many challenges relating to the inclusion of immigrants, including social

isolation, economic inequality, poor educational outcomes, prejudice and stereotyping.

The question is whether these problems are any worse in countries that have adopted

multiculturalism policies, as compared to those countries that have rejected multiculturalism

in favour of some alternative approach. And the answer here is clear: there is no such

evidence (see Kymlicka 2010b).

[2] Not all defenders of ‘interculturalism’ engage in these anti-multiculturalist tropes. Many

interculturalists view themselves as allies of multiculturalists (and vice versa), differing only

in choice of terminology or in level of analysis. My focus here, like Meer and Modood,

is only with that branch of the interculturalist literature that offers itself as categorically

different from multiculturalism, and as a remedy for its failures.


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f B

rist

ol]

at 0

3:17

17

Apr

il 20

12

[3] In the interests of full disclosure, I should note that I was invited to write a background paper

for the UNESCO report, and in that paper I argued (not unlike Meer and Modood) that

there were no good arguments or social science evidence for endorsing post-multicultural

interculturalism over multiculturalism � it has been published as ‘‘The Rise and Fall of

Multiculturalism? New Debates on Inclusion and Accommodation in Diverse Societies’’

(Kymlicka 2010a). I now think that my paper, while sound, was largely irrelevant to the

political task that the UNESCO World Report team had taken on.

[4] We can see this, for example, in the report on interculturalism produced by the Consultation

Committee on Accommodation Practices Relating to Cultural Differences, created in 2007

by the government of Quebec, and co-chaired by the philosopher Charles Taylor and the

sociologist Gerard Bouchard. In its main narrative, the Bouchard�Taylor Report engages in

the familiar anti-multiculturalist tropes identified by Meer and Modood (for example, that

it is fragmenting, relativist, etc.), and argues instead for interculturalism as a ‘counter’ to

multiculturalism (see, for example, Bouchard and Taylor 2008: 120, 123, 205, 281). However,

in several places, the report acknowledges in passing that these anti-multiculturalist tropes

may not actually be true, and that the Committee does not have the empirical evidence to

assess them (see, for example, Bouchard and Taylor 2008: 118, 192, 214). It’s clear that the

report hopes that readers will embrace their narrative of interculturalism as a counter to

multiculturalism without inquiring too closely into the social science evidence for it. And, as

with the White Paper and UNESCO reports, the Bouchard�Taylor narrative may well be an

effective piece of political drama to defend diversity within Quebec.

[5] For evidence that this indeed is taking place, see the articles in Steven Vertovec and Susanne

Wessendorf ’s The Multiculturalism Backlash: European Discourses, Policies and Practices

(2010), which show that the rhetorical retreat from the word multiculturalism is not

matched by any comparable retreat from actual multiculturalism policies, which are often

simply re-labelled. See also the cross-national Multiculturalism Policy Index available at:

www.queensu.ca/mcp/

[6] Or at least in English Canada, where support for multiculturalism remains high. The

situation in Quebec is more complicated (see note 4 above).

Works Cited

Bouchard, G. and Taylor, C., 2008. Building the future: a time for reconciliation [Abridged

report]. Gouvernement du Quebec. Available from: http://www.accommodements.qc.ca/

documentation/rapports/rapport-final-abrege-en.pdf [Accessed 12 January 2012].

Council of Europe Committee of Ministers, 2008. [118th Sess.] Living together as equals in dignity.

White Paper on intercultural dialogue. Strasbourg: Author. Available from: http://www.coe.int/

t/dg4/intercultural/Source/Pub_White_Paper/White%20Paper_final_revised_EN.pdf [Accessed

12 January 2012].

Kymlicka, W., 2007. Multicultural odysseys: navigating the new international politics of diversity.

Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Kymlicka, W., 2010a. The rise and fall of multiculturalism? New debates on inclusion and

accommodation in diverse societies. International social science journal, 199, 97�112.

Kymlicka, W., 2010b. Testing the liberal multiculturalist hypothesis: normative theories and social

science evidence. Canadian journal of political science, 43 (2), 257�271.

UNESCO, 2008. The 2nd UNESCO world report on cultural diversity: investing in cultural diversity

and intercultural dialogue. Available from: http://www.unesco.org/new/en/culture/resources/

report/the-unesco-world-report-on-cultural-diversity/ [Accessed 12 January 2012].

Vertovec, S. and Wessendorf, S. eds., 2010. The multiculturalism backlash: European discourses,

policies and practices. London and New York: Routledge.

216 W. Kymlicka

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f B

rist

ol]

at 0

3:17

17

Apr

il 20

12

www.queensu.ca/mcp/

http://www.accommodements.qc.ca/documentation/rapports/rapport-final-abrege-en.pdf

http://www.accommodements.qc.ca/documentation/rapports/rapport-final-abrege-en.pdf

http://www.coe.int/t/dg4/intercultural/Source/Pub_White_Paper/White%20Paper_final_revised_EN.pdf

http://www.coe.int/t/dg4/intercultural/Source/Pub_White_Paper/White%20Paper_final_revised_EN.pdf

http://www.unesco.org/new/en/culture/resources/report/the-unesco-world-report-on-cultural-diversity/

http://www.unesco.org/new/en/culture/resources/report/the-unesco-world-report-on-cultural-diversity/



Interculturalism vs. Multiculturalism: ADistinction without a Difference?Geoffrey Brahm Levey


To cite this article: Geoffrey Brahm Levey (2012): Interculturalism vs. Multiculturalism: ADistinction without a Difference?, Journal of Intercultural Studies, 33:2, 217-224







http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07256868.2012.649529



Interculturalism vs. Multiculturalism:A Distinction without a Difference?Geoffrey Brahm Levey

The terms ‘interculturalism’ and ‘multiculturalism’ have occupied the same discursive

space for a few decades now, especially in Continental Europe and in Quebec. Where

they have engaged, it has typically been interculturalists seeking to nudge multi-

culturalism out of the way or into a specific corner. Nasar Meer and Tariq Modood

do both sides � and indeed, all of us � a service by scrutinising the alleged differences

between the two approaches to the negotiation of cultural difference by and within

liberal democracies. They find the standard suggestions for interculturalism’s

distinctiveness and superiority over multiculturalism to be unconvincing. I agree

with the general thrust of their argument. The two terms are so discursively fluid and

the respective self-identifying camps seem so multifarious as to frustrate any clear or

stable demarcation between the two. Moreover, this is true even after restricting the

comparison, as Meer and Modood carefully do, to the strand of policy-related

multiculturalism that preoccupies liberal political theory. For all that, I demur on

some of the details of their case. I will conclude by suggesting that there is, perhaps,

something narrowly political at stake in the interculturalists’ campaign to supplant

multiculturalism.

Compounding the inherent fuzziness of the two rubrics is the range in the possible

points of reference. Does one, for example, take the measure of multiculturalism and

interculturalism to be their institutionalisation and policy formats or their

philosophical elaboration and statement of principles? And if the latter, which

elaboration should be deemed authoritative? Geographical and historical variations

are also in play. As Meer and Modood note, ‘multiculturalism’ means different things

in different places; it has different connotations and institutional ramifications, for

example, as one crosses the USA/Canada border. The meaning of ‘interculturalism’

also varies contextually. A decade or so ago, interculturalism as used in Continental

Geoffrey Brahm Levey is an Australian Research Council Future Fellow in Political Science at the University of

New South Wales. He was founding director of the Program in Jewish Studies 1996�2005. His recent

publications include, as editor, Political Theory and Australian Multiculturalism, 2nd ed. (Berghahn Books, 2012)

and Secularism, Religion and Multicultural Citizenship (with Tariq Modood, Cambridge University Press, 2008).

Correspondence to: Dr Geoffrey Brahm Levey, School of Social Sciences, University of New South Wales,

Sydney, NSW 2052, Australia. Email: [email protected]



http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07256868.2012.649529


Vol. 33, No. 2, April 2012, pp. 217�224

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f B

rist

ol]

at 0

3:17

17

Apr

il 20

12

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07256868.2012.649529

Europe tended to focus on the relations among citizens and groups in civil society

rather than on the state’s relation to its cultural minorities, arguably, the

predominant concern of multiculturalism.1 However, this was never true of

Quebecois interculturalism, which always defined itself in opposition to federal

Canada’s multiculturalism and is expressly concerned with the nexus of state or sub-

state policy, national or sub-national identity, and cultural difference within Quebec.

And now even in Europe, in the wake of militant Islam and the moral panic over

Muslim immigration and integration, interculturalism or ‘intercultural dialogue’ is

being advocated as an alternative to multiculturalism, offering a more acceptable set

of principles and arrangements for the state management of cultural diversity (e.g.

Council of Europe 2008). In this sense, European interculturalism has been

‘Canadianised’, although there remain important differences, to which I shall return.

Australia’s story, like its fauna and flora, is very different. ‘Multiculturalism’ was and

continues to be not so much the preferred as the only rubric invoked for denoting the

accommodation of cultural diversity. ‘Interculturalism’ has little profile here outside

some education circles, the Journal of Intercultural Studies, edited in Melbourne,

notwithstanding.2

In trying to locate what is at stake in interculturalism’s quest for product

differentiation, it is helpful, I think, to distinguish between ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ claims

underpinning the alleged contrast. (In concluding, I will distinguish also ‘political’

claims.) ‘Hard’ claims for interculturalism’s distinctiveness view it as fundamentally

different from multiculturalism. In contrast, ‘soft’ claims see its distinctiveness more

as a matter of emphasis. Unlike Meer and Modood, I would not discount outright

some of the ‘softer’ claims differentiating interculturalism.

Consider, for example, the suggestion that interculturalism places more emphasis

on the importance of dialogue and communication among groups than does

multiculturalism. Meer and Modood note that dialogue and dialogic relations

figure centrally also in some of the founding statements of multiculturalism, such

as those of Charles Taylor (1992) and Bhikhu Parekh (2000). Regarding Parekh,

who expressly advances the idea of ‘intercultural dialogue’ between minorities and

the majority culture, there is no question. However, Taylor’s rather more abstract

point that ‘recognition’ is inherently a dialogical process doesn’t seem necessarily to

entail or imply the kind of discursive exchanges that interculturalists have in mind.

After all, part of Taylor’s point is that recognition and misrecognition are

communicated variously, including through naming, images, symbols, inclusion

and, in the case of non-recognition, through silence and exclusion. Other early

statements of multiculturalism allowed much less provision for discursive dialogue,

such as Will Kymlicka’s effort to stipulate certain kinds of cultural rights for

particular kinds of cultural minorities based on an interpretation of liberal values

(1995).

Intercultural dialogue has hardly figured prominently also in multicultural policy

or practice. For example, the National Agenda for a Multicultural Australia (OMA

1989), Australia’s first national multiculturalism policy, is silent on the place of such

218 G.B. Levey

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f B

rist

ol]

at 0

3:17

17

Apr

il 20

12

dialogue. Moreover, while ethnic communities’ councils were among the first non-

government institutions of fledgling Australian multiculturalism in the 1970s, they

largely have been a case of a small number of ethnic group members talking among

themselves. Ethnic and religious minorities have not been encouraged to contribute

to public debate from their own perspectives and, where they have sought to do so,

they typically have been met with a chilly and rather monological response from

‘mainstreamers’ (Hage 1998, Stratton 1998, Levey 2008). The reaction to the

Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams’ suggestion that some aspects of

shariah law might be recognised in English law (2008), suggests that ‘shouting down’

rather than ‘talking through’ minority issues also affects other places ostensibly

committed to multiculturalism (at the time).

Therefore, an attempt to place more emphasis on dialogue in contrast to the

experience with or under multiculturalism does not strike me as unreasonable. Meer

and Modood are surely correct, however, that there is nothing in multiculturalism

that precludes an emphasis on intercultural discursive exchange, indeed, quite the

opposite. Parekh’s example shows this much as does more recent work in

multicultural theory including, notably, Modood’s own ‘political’ model of multi-

cultural politics (2007) (see also Deveaux 2006, Gatens 2008, Eisenberg 2009). Such

work doubtless is responding to some of the same perceived deficiencies in earlier

multiculturalism that interculturalists have sought to redress. Contrary to Meer and

Modood’s suggestion, intercultural dialogue is also given a prominent role in some

defences of multiculturalism grounded in individual autonomy and human rights

(e.g. Bader 2007, Phillips 2007).3 At the same time, the recent furore over the wearing

of the kirpan or ceremonial dagger by Sikhs in the Quebec National Assembly shows

that ensuring a genuine dialogue over controversial cases is a challenge even for states

that embrace interculturalism (Globe and Mail 2011). Any compelling claim for the

superiority of interculturalism over multiculturalism on the importance of

intercultural dialogue, then, would seem to be passe.

A second area where I think Meer and Modood’s critique does not quite hit the

mark concerns the related claim that interculturalism is ‘less groupist and culture

bound’ and ‘more synthesised and interactive’ than multiculturalism. Their rebuttal

here comprises citing the work of two defenders of interculturalism for Quebec,

Gagnon and Iacovino (2007), and highlighting how they condemn federal Canadian

multiculturalism for its emphasis on individual rights, while touting the importance

of preserving Quebec as a distinct nation. Suddenly, it is interculturalism that appears

to be more groupist than multiculturalism, while the Canadians’ concern with

Quebec nationalism is a world away from the focus of European interculturalists on

migrant communities at the local and neighbourhood level.

There are serious tensions regarding the place and valorisation of the individual in

the accounts of both multiculturalists and interculturalists, as we will see.

Interculturalism in Europe has indeed tended to be applied less to the state and

national identity and more at the local community level, though, as noted at the

outset, this contrast has diminished over the last decade. Where Quebec seeks to


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f B

rist

ol]

at 0

3:17

17

Apr

il 20

12

protect its language and culture against the tide of anglophone Canada (and the

USA), Europeans have been busy refashioning interculturalism into an overarching

state and societal approach to governing cultural diversity on the basis of

fundamental rights and liberties (Council of Europe 2008). Be this as it may, what

Canadian interculturalists such as Gagnon and Iacovino mean, I think, is that the

protection and survival of the Quebec nation must be the context within which

interaction between groups and cultural synthesis can then take place. Their

argument is that interculturalism both suits this context and is more amenable to

such relations than is multiculturalism, whether in its communitarian or individu-

alist guises. A rebuttal, then, would need to scrutinise the latter part of this claim. As

this is hardly the place to do so, suffice it to make two points.

First, regarding the commonplace criticism that the logic of multiculturalism

inexorably promotes social fragmentation, it is worth noting that even Michel

Wieviorka (1998), who condemns multiculturalism in part on this basis, feels

compelled to distinguish ‘relatively integrated’ versions of multiculturalism as

practised in Canada, Australia and Sweden, from other varieties. Second, it is

unclear why the choice, cultural hybridity, and multiple-level exchanges that liberal

multiculturalism allows are so different from, let alone inferior to, the kinds of

cultural interactions and synthesis trumpeted by Canadian interculturalists. In the

end, the main point of contention driving at least Quebecois interculturalists would

seem to be the status of a national identity and majority culture.

This much is clear from a recent programmatic statement on interculturalism by

the sociologist Gerard Bouchard (2011), who, along with the philosopher Charles

Taylor, authored the 2008 report on ‘reasonable accommodation’ in Quebec

commissioned by the provincial government. In his recent article, Bouchard ventures

the ‘hard’ claim that multiculturalism and interculturalism operate within funda-

mentally different paradigms. Where multiculturalism is said to operate in a

‘diversity’ paradigm, in which individuals and groups have equal status under the

same laws and there is ‘‘no recognition of a majority culture’’, interculturalism is said

to operate in a ‘duality’ paradigm, where ‘‘diversity is conceived and managed as a

relationship between [immigrant] minorities and a cultural majority that could be

described as foundational’’ (Bouchard 2011: 441�442; italics quoted).

Though they do not discuss Bouchard’s article, Meer and Modood address the

claim that interculturalism is ‘‘committed to a stronger sense . . . of national identity

and cohesion’’. In reply, they suggest that the privileging of a national culture is at

odds with (some) interculturalists’ own principles of mutual integration; note how all

democracies are shaped through particular ethno-national and religious histories;

and, while endorsing the importance of a shared national identity, insist that its terms

and content must be open and a matter of renegotiation among all societal groups

and individuals as equals. Each of these points has force, but together they seem to

me only to confirm Bouchard’s claim of a categorical difference between

interculturalism, which wants recognition for a foundational majority culture, and

multiculturalism, which wants to refuse it. Such confirmation is unfortunate, and not

220 G.B. Levey

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f B

rist

ol]

at 0

3:17

17

Apr

il 20

12

only because Meer and Modood set out to refute interculturalism’s claim to

distinctiveness. It is unfortunate also because it overlooks how multiculturalists and

multiculturalisms are themselves divided on the place and status of an established

national culture and identity. Some multiculturalists ignore national identity entirely

(e.g. Phillips 2007); some, like Modood (2007), stress its importance in principle but

decline to give it any living content; while some, in the guise of liberal nationalists,

think that the justification of multiculturalism begins precisely from the inevitably in

practice and the legitimacy in principle of democracies privileging certain cultural-

cum-religious traditions (e.g. Tamir 1993, Kymlicka 1995, Miller 1995).

State multiculturalisms also vary in this respect. As Bouchard’s account implies,

the federal provisions governing Canadian multiculturalism � the Canadian Multi-

culturalism Act (1988) and section 27 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and

Freedoms (1982) � do not privilege an established or dominant culture in Canada.

However, the same cannot be said for federal Australian multicultural policy and

certainly Australian political culture. The 1989 National Agenda for a Multicultural

Australia, for example, acknowledges the importance of ‘‘our British heritage’’ in

helping ‘‘to define us as Australian’’, and emphasises that multiculturalism ‘‘does not

entail a rejection of Australian values, customs and beliefs’’. True, the subsequent

national multicultural policy statements, including the current one (DIAC 2011),

have instead emphasised multiculturalism itself as being integral to Australian

national identity, which is more in keeping with Bouchard’s model. However, the

words of the documents here do not capture the centrality of Anglo-Australian

institutions and culture to the character and tempo of the country, which

multicultural policy nowhere seeks seriously to displace. The most that is ventured

is an abstract recognition that institutions and Australian identity will inevitably

change over time with the changing composition of the Australian people.

There are, to be sure, aspects to the dominance of the founding Anglo-Australian

institutions that properly count as a breach of multiculturalism rather than its

realisation in this country. A particularly striking example relates to the ‘‘2020

Summit’’ in 2008. The Summit was the brainchild of former Prime Minister Kevin

Rudd on winning office in 2007, and sought to bring to Canberra 1,000 of Australia’s

best and brightest to share their ideas for Australia’s future. Yet, despite some 30 years

of official multiculturalism, and despite every government department having

available a list of ethnic, religious and national holidays of Australia’s minorities,

and despite political leaders conventionally referring to Australia’s Judeo-Christian

heritage, the government scheduled the Summit on dates that clashed with the

beginning of the Jewish festival of Passover, thus making attendance impossible for

many of the Jewish Australians invited (Australian Jewish News 2008). A national

event meant to summon the ideas of a select group of Australians based on individual

merit excluded a minority courtesy of entrenched cultural blinkers and/or

indifference. This kind of exclusion is precisely what Australian multiculturalism

was meant to arrest.


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f B

rist

ol]

at 0

3:17

17

Apr

il 20

12

The point, however, is not that Anglo-Australian dominance sometimes eclipses

Australian multicultural policy. Rather, it is that Australian multiculturalism

fundamentally accepts the dominance of a ‘‘cultural majority that could be described

as foundational’’ (Bouchard 2011: 442). This much, of course, does not make

Australia’s situation akin to Quebec’s quest for national�cultural survival in

anglophone North America. It does, however, underscore again that multicultural-

isms differ on the place and status of a foundational dominant culture. In practice as

in theory, some versions of multiculturalism simply resemble more Bouchard’s

‘duality’ rather than ‘diversity’ paradigm.

Which brings me to the fourth and final marker of interculturalism’s alleged

difference that Meer and Modood discuss, namely, its readiness to criticise illiberal

cultural practices in contrast to multiculturalism’s putative cultural relativism. The

authors do not really compare interculturalism with multiculturalism here so much

as make the independent and quite valid point that ethnic traditions, and not simply

religious ones (as often claimed in critiques of multiculturalism), also present the

challenge of illiberal practices in liberal societies. The charge of cultural relativism

against multiculturalism is, perhaps, the clearest indicator of how caricature has come

to suffice for characterisation in these discussions. As Modood (2007: 1) has

observed, multiculturalism as a public philosophy and policy historically emerged in

liberal democracies from liberal democratic values. While a few liberal theorists of

multiculturalism reach highly permissive conclusions (e.g. Margalit and Halbertal

1994, Kukathas 2003), and some theorists, including Modood, are critical of

necessarily starting from conventional liberal assumptions, most end up conforming

to them when it comes to controversial practices such as clitoridectomy, polygamy,

the denial of a general education for girls and the like. What we have in the

theoretical debates often resembles the narcissism of small differences, where theories

are presented in dramatic contrast while the discussion of cases reaches much the

same conclusions.

Certainly, one would be hard pressed to find a multicultural policy in any liberal

democracy that sanctions cultural practices that violate fundamental human rights

and liberties. If places like Britain and the Netherlands have witnessed more licence

(as against liberty), it is only because they have been less vigilant in insisting on the

liberal democratic basis of their multicultural policy. As for interculturalists, they

occupy both sides of the street. Recall Gagnon and Iacovino’s complaint, noted above,

that Canadian multiculturalism is grounded in liberal individualism and bound by

the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Bouchard (2011: 464) also associates

multiculturalism with liberal individualism, disapprovingly. Well, interculturalists

cannot have it both ways. Multiculturalism cannot be both committed to liberal

individualism and a philosophy of cultural relativism. Moreover, we should not

forget how the Council of Europe’s philosophy of intercultural dialogue is all about

promoting and guaranteeing the panoply of human and individual rights (2008).

By way of conclusion, let me distinguish another sense, neither ‘hard’ nor ‘soft’, in

which interculturalism might be touted as superior to multiculturalism. For want of a

222 G.B. Levey

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f B

rist

ol]

at 0

3:17

17

Apr

il 20

12

better word, I will call this sense ‘political’. Of course, Quebecois interculturalism is

also manifestly political; the province was never going to accept a federal policy that

implied that Quebeckers were like other minorities in the Canadian mosaic. Had the

federal policy been dubbed ‘interculturalism’, Quebec may well have adopted

‘multiculturalism’ to denote its national status and distinctive approach to cultural

diversity. However, here I have a different sense of ‘political’ in mind. On this

account, whether interculturalism differs substantively from multiculturalism is very

much beside the point. Rather, what matters is that the term ‘multiculturalism’ has

become so mired in controversy and is so maligned in public debate that its semantic

capital, as it were, has been spent. What is needed on this view, therefore, is a new or

different label that can appeal and be publicly sold, even if only to (re-)present much

of what it claims to supplant. I think something of this ‘political’ dynamic is driving

much of the current fascination with interculturalism and post-multiculturalism (see

Vertovec and Wessendorf 2009). Previously, I have suggested that ‘interculturalism’ is

just as semantically problematic as multiculturalism, since both terms conjure images

of culturalism ruling the roost (Levey 2009). That interculturalism is nonetheless

being embraced and promoted by the Council of Europe, among others, as an

alternative to multiculturalism suggests, however, that political considerations and

expediency and not merely semantics are involved.

I offer this last observation as political analysis only; I have no wish to endorse it.

Politics, after all, is also about striving to clarify the meaning of concepts and to

correct confusions and misrepresentations. Meer and Modood are to be commended

for pressing the question of whether interculturalism is all that different from

multiculturalism.

Notes

[1] A situation aptly captured by Will Kymlicka’s title (2003), ‘‘Multicultural States and

Intercultural Citizens’’.

[2] The adjective ‘intercultural’ does have some currency in reference to Australian multi-

culturalism, albeit typically as an aspect of it rather than as an alternative to it (see, for

example, FECCA 2010: 13).

[3] I try to show how autonomy-based liberalism invites intercultural dialogue in Levey (2012).

Works Cited

Australian Jewish News, 2008. Jews silenced at Canberra talkfest, 6 March.

Bader, V., 2007. Democracy or secularism? Associational governance of religious diversity. Amsterdam:

University of Amsterdam Press.

Bouchard, G., 2011. What is interculturalism? McGill law journal, 56, 435�468.

Council of Europe Committee of Ministers, 2008. [118th Sess.] Living together as equals in dignity.

White Paper on intercultural dialogue. Strasbourg: Author.

Deveaux, M., 2006. Gender and justice in multicultural liberal states. Oxford: Oxford University

Press.


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f B

rist

ol]

at 0

3:17

17

Apr

il 20

12

DIAC (Department of Immigration and Citizenship), 2011. The people of Australia: Australia’s

multicultural policy. Canberra: Author.

Eisenberg, Avigail, 2009. Reasons of identity: a normative guide to the political and legal assessment of

identity claims. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

FECCA (Federation of Ethnic Communities’ Councils of Australia), 2010. ‘Different but equal’:

FECCA’s national multicultural agenda. Canberra: Author.

Gagnon, A.G. and Iacovino, R., 2007. Federalism, citizenship and Quebec: debating multiculturalism.

Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Gatens, M., 2008. Conflicting imaginaries in Australian multiculturalism: women’s rights, group

rights and Aboriginal customary law. In: G.B. Levey, ed. Political theory and Australian

multiculturalism. New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 151�170.

Globe and Mail, 2011. The kirpan and Canada’s French�English divide, 21 January.

Hage, Ghassan, 1998. White nation: fantasies of white supremacy in a multicultural society.

Annandale, NSW: Pluto Press.

Kukathas, C., 2003. The liberal archipelago: a theory of diversity and freedom. Oxford: Oxford

University Press.

Kymlicka, W., 1995. Multicultural citizenship: a liberal theory of minority rights. Oxford: Clarendon

Press.

Kymlicka, W., 2003. Multicultural states and intercultural citizens. Theory and research in education,

1, 147�169.

Levey, G.B., 2008. Multiculturalism and Australian national identity. In: G.B. Levey, ed. Political

theory and Australian multiculturalism. New York: Berghahn Books, 254�276.

Levey, G.B., 2009. What is living and what is dead in multiculturalism. Ethnicities, 9, 75�93.

Levey, G.B., 2012. Liberal autonomy as a pluralistic value. The Monist, 95 (1), 103�126.

Margalit, A. and Halbertal, M., 1994. Liberalism and the right to culture. Social research, 61,

491�510.

Miller, D., 1995. On nationality. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Modood, T., 2007. Multiculturalism: a civic idea. Cambridge: Polity Press.

OMA (Office of Multicultural Affairs), 1989. National agenda for a multicultural Australia.

Canberra: AGPS.

Parekh, B., 2000. Rethinking multiculturalism: cultural diversity and political theory. London:

Macmillan.

Phillips, A., 2007. Multiculturalism without culture. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Stratton, J., 1998. Race daze: Australia in identity crisis. Sydney: Pluto Press.

Tamir, Y., 1993. Liberal nationalism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Taylor, C., 1992. The politics of recognition. In: A. Gutmann, ed. Multiculturalism and ‘the politics of

recognition’: an essay. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Vertovec, S. and Wessendorf, S., 2009. The multiculturalism backlash: European discourses, policies

and practice. London: Routledge.

Wieviorka, M., 1998. Is multiculturalism the solution? Ethnic and racial studies, 21, 881�910.

Williams, Dr R., The Archbishop of Canterbury, 2008. Civil and religious law in England: a religious

perspective [Lecture], 7 February. Available from: http://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/

articles.php/1137/archbishops-lecture-civil-and-religious-law-in-england-a-religious-perspective

[Accessed 1 June 2011].

224 G.B. Levey

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f B

rist

ol]

at 0

3:17

17

Apr

il 20

12

http://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/articles.php/1137/archbishops-lecture-civil-and-religious-law-in-england-a-religious-perspective

http://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/articles.php/1137/archbishops-lecture-civil-and-religious-law-in-england-a-religious-perspective



Multiculturalism: A Concept to beRedefined and Certainly Not Replacedby the Extremely Vague Term ofInterculturalismMichel Wieviorka


To cite this article: Michel Wieviorka (2012): Multiculturalism: A Concept to be Redefined andCertainly Not Replaced by the Extremely Vague Term of Interculturalism, Journal of InterculturalStudies, 33:2, 225-231







http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07256868.2012.649530



Multiculturalism: A Concept to beRedefined and Certainly Not Replacedby the Extremely Vague Term ofInterculturalismMichel Wieviorka

This paper offers a few comments on Meer and Modood’s discussion of inter-

culturalism vs. multiculturalism. Before broaching the subject matter of their paper,

I would like to raise an issue that pertains to their epistemological approach. What

makes it uncomfortable for me is that it appears to be underpinned by a kind of

Anglo-Saxon ethnocentrism, applying to both multiculturalism and interculturalism

as developed in Meer and Modood’s text.

Linguistic Hegemony and Ethnocentrism

The world is made up of different languages and cultures: not everyone speaks

English, not everyone lives in English or thinks in English and, in the first instance, it

is this domination of the English language bordering on a monopoly of English that

makes me suspicious. I wonder if one can seriously write about multiculturalism and

interculturalism by relying exclusively on authors who write in English or by referring

to historical experiences that are only accessible through this language. Moreover, if

the question of translation � the passage from one language to another in real life and

in the social sciences � is not raised, does it not heighten ethnocentrism? Should we

not give some thought to multilingualism and interlingualism? Should we leave

consideration of the linguistic question to the humanities alone? Are the political and

social sciences above this question? Perhaps we should recall here that the first

important document, the one that started the discussion on multiculturalism in

Michel Wieviorka is Professor (Directeur d’etudes) at Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales; former

Director of the Centre for Sociological Analysis and Intervention (CADIS); member of the Editorial Committees

of Ethnic and Racial Studies; Ethnic and Migration Studies; Critical Horizons; International Review of Sociology.

His last book: Evil: A Sociological perspective, Polity Press, 2012. Professor Wieviorka served as President

of the International Sociological Association in 2010. Correspondence to: Professor Michel Wieviorka,

Administrateur de la FMSH, 190, avenue de France, CS 71345, 75648 Paris Cedex 13, France. Email:

[email protected]; [email protected]



http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07256868.2012.649530


Vol. 33, No. 2, April 2012, pp. 225�231

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f B

rist

ol]

at 0

3:17

17

Apr

il 20

12

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07256868.2012.649530

Canada, was the very official preliminary report of the Royal Commission on

Bilingualism and Biculturalism (1965) (my emphasis).

The social sciences originated in Europe (France, Germany, England in the

trilogy set out by Lepenies 1985) before developing, for the main part, in North

America and in Latin America. Today they are becoming less territorialised; thus

why do we continue to give primacy, and even accord a monopoly, to approaches,

questions and experiences specific to Western societies alone? We might be advised

to follow the example of Amartya Sen (2005, 2009) here. He invites us in particular

to think of democracy by questioning the classical model whereby democracy

is an invention of the Ancient Greeks handed down to what was to become the

Western world � democracy also exists in Africa and in India (a country known

for its multiculturalism, ignored in the paper by Nasar Meer and Tariq Modood).

Similarly, Amartya Sen encourages us to examine forms of justice that, here again, are

not those of which we spontaneously think in Western societies, and which are no less

worthy of interest. Should we not consider research like that of Francois Jullien

(2008), who, imbued with his knowledge of China, suggests that we think differ-

ently about the concept of universal values and that we reconsider the dialogue

between cultures not in terms of identity and difference but of distance and cross

fertilisation?

Researchers in former colonies, or in any event some of them, far beyond post-

colonialism, are producing analyses, categories, modes of approach and research that

ranks them at the top level amongst the best in the world without necessarily having

given pride of place to what has been written in US, British or ‘international’

publications; nor have they retreated into either a national or regional relativism

involving rejection of universal values and so-called Western knowledge in the name

of local values. Moreover, they can do all this in their own languages, and not

necessarily in English. The suspicion of ethnocentrism aroused by Nasar Meer and

Tariq Modood’s paper may also apply to their conception of those Western societies

where people do not live and do not think in English. Is it an issue to produce

consideration of concepts of the type being discussed here without quoting in the

original a single author expressing him or herself in a European language other than

English � French, German, Spanish or Italian for example � or in the case of Latin

America, to not mention a single text in Spanish or Portuguese? Is it acceptable to

state without hesitation, as do Nasar Meer and Tariq Modood that: ‘‘the term

‘multiculturalism’ in Europe came to mean, and now means throughout the English-

speaking world and beyond . . .’’ (this issue: 181) (my emphasis)?

Identities on the Move

The limits of multiculturalism as a way of dealing legally and institutionally with

cultural differences have long since been pointed out and I will merely focus on those

which, in my opinion, are either insufficiently developed by Nasar Meer and Tariq

Modood, or quite simply ignored by them. As I explained in 9 lecons de sociologie

226 M. Wieviorka

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f B

rist

ol]

at 0

3:17

17

Apr

il 20

12

(Wieviorka 2008), multiculturalism is permanently under threat of being subjected to

two diametrically opposed criticisms and must defend itself on two fronts: on the one

hand it can be accused of obscurantism, of refusing the universal values of reason and

law, of producing the worst forms of communitarianism and, on the other hand, it

can be charged with undermining the Nation, the dominant religion, the traditional

values established in the framework of the nation-state and the order and cultural

heritage on which the latter is founded. In other words, it is caught in the crossfire

between the opponents of the Enlightenment and those who are its heirs. This means

that its defence is a delicate matter.

Multiculturalism ensures that cultural differences are dealt with by recognising

them and by requesting in the best possible wording, for example, that used by Will

Kymlicka, that they be ‘liberal’ � let me add that this cannot be translated into French

by the adjective ‘liberal’ which has a very different meaning, but, much better, by

moderate, well-tempered, respectful of republican values and the democratic spirit.

However, we still have to define these differences.

The first point that is immediately apparent to the sociologist is that they are not

static but on the move; differences are being produced and not merely reproduced.

They are in the realm of invention and not only, or predominantly, of tradition �something that is well expressed by Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (1992) who

speak of the invention of traditions. They do not constitute entities that are stable and

defined once and for all. On the contrary, they tend to change: recognising them may

lead to fixing them in time and encouraging the domination of the group and its

leaders over individuals. The processes of invention and transformation of collective

differences, this is not a paradox, owe a lot to modern individualism: individuals

choose to belong to one identity or another or to free themselves from one: their

identity is self-determined. If they claim to adhere to a specific identity or a minority,

it is not, or not only, because their parents belong to it; it is rather the result of

a personal decision. In democracies, it is very likely that multiculturalism will

constantly clash with individualism, which states that rights are granted to indi-

viduals and not to groups. Nonetheless, it may also provide a constructive answer to

its project of having differences recognised by promoting cultural rights, but on one

condition: that these rights are attributed not to groups, communities or minorities

and thereby in fact to their representatives, but to the individuals who belong to

them. In other words, multiculturalism only provides acceptable models if cultural

identities fully accept the working of democracy and respect individual human rights.

This is almost always a possible apart from specific and limited problems (like female

circumcision).

The historical experience of the past 40 years shows that multiculturalism is not

suited to dealing with all differences. Thus, as Nasar Meer and Tariq Modood point

out, Canadian multiculturalism cannot adequately cope with the demands for

independence of Quebec nationalists or for greater autonomy of the First Peoples.

In the case of migrants, multiculturalism is sometimes refused by those who do not

wish to be considered from the point of view of cultural difference or origin � this is


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f B

rist

ol]

at 0

3:17

17

Apr

il 20

12

the case for the writer Neil Bissoondath (a close relative of V.S. Naipaul). If we really

want to give words a precise meaning, multiculturalism must mean inter alia

provisions for dealing with cultural differences. Now, in concrete terms, it is rapidly

apparent that the differences that are in the forefront of public discussion are of

another type; notably some are religious. Others are racial and therefore belong to the

realm of nature and not of culture, at least in some political cultures. We have here

two points of capital importance.

Religion, Race and Culture

Religion is not culture, even if they do overlap or are linked, as Clifford Geertz

in particular thought. Moreover, as religion becomes globalised it becomes delo-

calised and loses its ties with the original culture of the place where it appeared.

It becomes, in Geertz’ words ‘‘a floating object, deprived of any social rooting in

a resonant tradition or in established institutions’’ (2007: 428).1 When there is a

separation, even if only in part, between religion and culture, it must be clearly stated

that multiculturalism deals with culture and not with religion. The legal and

institutional approach to religion in democracy falls within the domain of what

the French call laıcite or secularism � a concept of which it would be wrong to

imagine they have the monopoly, as is demonstrated for example by the Quebec

sociologist, Micheline Milot and the French sociologist, Jean Bauberot (Bauberot

and Milot 2011). In its countless material variants, secularism ensures the separation

of the religious from the political; it does not constitute a policy of recognition of

identities.

This point is all the more important as the recent discussion on multiculturalism,

in particular in several European countries, has been mainly concerned with religion

and, more precisely, with Islam. Within the space of a few months, the German

Chancellor, Angela Merkel, in autumn 2010, then the British Prime Minister, David

Cameron, in February 2011, immediately commended by the president of the French

Front National, Marine Le Pen, and the French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, all

declared, in practically the same words, that multiculturalism was a failure; if they

did so it was mainly to target Islam locating it at the core of an amalgam including

immigrants, terrorism, criminality, delinquency and insecurity. If we exclude Islam

from the scene, in the situations referred to, multiculturalism is only applicable to a

much narrower and less sensitive set of problems.

A similar observation has to be made concerning groups defined racially, by

physical attributes beginning with skin colour. Whether members define themselves

in this way or whether they are considered different by others, the question is not

one of a cultural difference but one of a natural difference and the main problem

posed is not one of the recognition of a cultural identity, but that of racism and

discrimination. There again, multiculturalism is not appropriate, when processes of

racialisation and self-racialisation are intensifying in numerous societies.

228 M. Wieviorka

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f B

rist

ol]

at 0

3:17

17

Apr

il 20

12

An End to ‘Methodological Nationalism’

However, the main difficulties encountered by multiculturalism, particularly as it was

conceived of in the 1970s and 1980s, derive from its being necessarily set in a precise

political, legal and institutional context that is almost always that of the nation-state

(sometimes local experiences are reported like that in the town of Frankfort-am-Main

in Germany at the time when Dany Cohn-Bendit was in charge of this same dossier

on behalf of the town council). Now this context poses a problem. As the German

sociologist Ulrich Beck puts it so forcefully, globalisation forces us to put an end

to ‘methodological nationalism’ whereby the analysis of major social, cultural

and political questions can only be considered within the arena of the nation-

state, whereas these questions are global and extend far beyond this space. This is

particularly true of cultural differences. There is an increasing tendency for these

to be located in diaspora networks, which sometimes justify speaking in terms of

transnationalism, a theme launched in the 1990s and open to discussion. The space

of differences does not coincide with that of nation-states and this can make a

multicultural policy tricky, difficult and even impossible. Take the Kurds for example:

there are Kurds in several countries in the Middle East (Iraq, Turkey, Syria in

particular), and in several European societies. Any multicultural processing of this

identity in these societies is constantly subject to the weakening effect of the impact of

the political and geopolitical implications of what is happening for example in Turkey

and Iraq.

This point is exacerbated and made even more critical if we consider another

aspect of the problem that is also neglected by Nasar Meer and Tariq Modood: the

fact that when cultural differences are linked to migratory phenomena, they do not

form a unified whole. Some migrants correspond to the most classical models of

immigration, being assimilated into the host society, or at least integrated, preserving,

in these cases, for generations a few cultural traits, for example, in dietary matters.

However, others circulate, coming and going between two or even several societies

without settling anywhere, present-day nomads in the well-turned phrase of the late

Alberto Melucci (1989). Yet others are in transit, they are only passing through the

society in question endeavouring to reach other shores. Multiculturalism is not suited

to all these situations; for example, it is totally unsuited to migrants in transit, no

matter what their differences.

All these difficulties do not ruin the concept of multiculturalism as long as it is

amended quite extensively to take them into consideration � in a recent book

(Wieviorka 2011), I suggested some paths to follow. In this book, I deal specifically

with the question at the core of Nasar Meer and Tariq Modood’s paper, that of

interculturalism as a possible substitute for a multiculturalism; the latter supposed

to be shaky or in considerable difficulty � an observation that, as I said, does seem to

me to be exaggerated.


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f B

rist

ol]

at 0

3:17

17

Apr

il 20

12

Weakness of Interculturalism

The concept of interculturalism, as Nasar Meer and Tariq Modood quite rightly

observe, is an integral part of communication and dialogue and some see therein an

effective answer to the challenge constituted by the project of reconciling universal

values and cultural specificities. However, over and above indicating a positive

attitude and good intentions, can interculturalism take the shape of a concept as

well worked out, in its different variants, as that of multiculturalism? A text like the

European Union one that dates back to 20062 leads us to doubt it. Intercultural

dialogue, it explains, should ‘‘strengthen respect for cultural diversity’’ and contribute

to portraying ‘‘a diverse, pluralist, solidarity-based and dynamic society, not only in

Europe but also in the world’’: the least that one can say is that the concept here

is vague and much too general. Is it possible to make it more specific, as a few of

the authors quoted by Nasar Meer and Tariq Modood attempt to do? Their endeav-

ours are never as clear, conceptually, but also legally and institutionally as is

multiculturalism.

Moreover, in many respects interculturalism comes up against the same difficulties

as multiculturalism. What cultures are we talking about? Are they defined exclusively

in the framework of the nation-state � the only context seriously considered by Nasar

Meer and Tariq Modood, as if it was not necessary to consider the much larger spaces

in which cultures are often situated? Are they stable? Is there not a risk of confusing

them with religions? Is it a question of organising communication between cultures

or, which seems to me more relevant, between individuals and groups belonging to

different cultures? If this is the case, under what conditions is it possible? Is there not

a need for a third party who acts as an intermediary as in the experiences I describe in

my book, with reference for example to New Caledonia, when the dialogue in 1988

between Kanaks and Caldoches was only possible through the intermediary of Michel

Rocard, Prime Minister at the time; or the Oslo Accords negotiations organised at

the beginning of the 1990s by Norwegian intermediaries to enable Palestinians and

Israelis to talk, which came up against political but also cultural obstacles?

Finally, the main limit to a potential concept of interculturalism is due to the

fact that it proposes to connect cultures with each other while multiculturalism is

concerned with setting up a legal and institutional framework enabling each culture

which it considers to find a place in a society while, at the same time, being

recognised at the level of public authorities and the State.

My conclusion as to the fundamental question involved is therefore in the last

analysis close to that of Nasar Meer and Tariq Modood, even if their approach seems

to me in many respects open to criticism: multiculturalism is a concept that can and

must be re-enchanted, while interculturalism functions at a much less sophisticated

level, and a much less political one for us to be able to assert that it can act as a

substitute. At the most, it may be possible to envisage it as complementary.

230 M. Wieviorka

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f B

rist

ol]

at 0

3:17

17

Apr

il 20

12

Notes

[1] This was the distinguished social anthropologist’s last article before his death.

[2] Decision 1983/2006/CE of the European Parliament and the Council.

Works Cited

Bauberot, J. and Milot, M., 2011. Laıcites sans frontieres. Paris: Seuil.

European Parliament and the Council. Decision 1983/2006/CE.

Geertz, C., 2007. La religion, sujet d’avenir. In: M. Wieviorka, A. Debarle and J. Ohana, eds.

Les Sciences sociales en mutation. Auxerre: Sciences Humaines.

Hobsbawm, E. and Ranger, T., eds., 1992. The invention of tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press.

Jullien, F., 2008. De l’universel, du commun et du dialogue entre les cultures. Paris: Fayard.

Lepenies, W., 1985. Die drei Kulturen. Soziologie zwischen Literatur und Wissenschaft. Berlin: Hanser.

Melucci, A., 1989. Nomads of the present: social movements and individual needs in contemporary

society. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism, 1965. A preliminary report. Ottawa: Queen’s

Printer.

Sen, A., 2005. The argumentative Indian. London: Allen Lane.

Sen, A., 2009. The idea of justice. London: Harvard University Press and Allen Lane.

Wieviorka, M., 2008. 9 lecons de sociologie. Paris: Robert Laffont.

Wieviorka, M., 2011. Pour la prochaine gauche. Le monde change, la gauche doit changer. Paris:

Robert Laffont.


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f B

rist

ol]

at 0

3:17

17

Apr

il 20

12



Rejoinder: Assessing the Divergenceson our Readings of Interculturalism andMulticulturalismTariq Modood & Nasar Meer


To cite this article: Tariq Modood & Nasar Meer (2012): Rejoinder: Assessing the Divergences on ourReadings of Interculturalism and Multiculturalism, Journal of Intercultural Studies, 33:2, 233-244







http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07256868.2012.649531



Rejoinder: Assessing the Divergenceson our Readings of Interculturalismand MulticulturalismTariq Modood & Nasar Meer

The responses to our paper vary in their level of agreement and thematic focus but

not in their scholarship and intellectual generosity, and so we wish to begin this

rejoinder by registering our thanks to each respondent for reading and engaging with

the piece in the spirit in which it was authored. Indeed, we are delighted to learn of

the intent of agreement amongst us, which of course varies, and so we will take the

opportunity provided here to address issues of potential disagreement and departure

as we understand it.

Political Expediencies and Academic Knowledge

In his broadly supportive assessment, Will Kymlicka distinguishes between, on the

one hand, sound scholarship investigating the role and impact of multicultural

policies, which establishes these policies’ relative success according to a number of

indicators (or at least does not support the thesis that where adopted they have been

detrimental), and on the other hand, politically useful narratives or ‘myths’ that

(reflecting mixed motives) play to the gallery and eschew reliable social science

research. He suggests therefore that though intellectually sound, our assessment of

political interculturalism risks being politically inert. Reflecting on his own

engagement with the UNESCO World Report on Cultural Diversity (2008), he

concludes that his submission of an evidence-based defence of multiculturalism

policies was not attuned to the political task that the report’s authors had taken on.

Therefore, and while he will continue to be an advocate of multiculturalism as

relevant to many countries the world over, he is not convinced that it is best to do so

whilst using the term ‘multiculturalism’, which is too politically damaged in too many

Tariq Modood is Professor of Sociology, Politics and Public Policy and the Director of the Centre for the Study

of Ethnicity and Citizenship at the University of Bristol. He is a co-founding editor of the international journal

Ethnicities. Email: [email protected].

Nasar Meer is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the School of Arts and Social Sciences, Northumbria University,

and a Minda de Gunzberg Fellow at the Center for European Studies, Harvard University. www.nasarmeer.com



http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07256868.2012.649531


Vol. 33, No. 2, April 2012, pp. 233�244

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f B

rist

ol]

at 0

3:17

17

Apr

il 20

12

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07256868.2012.649531

countries, and especially in Europe. As it is clear that some of the advocates of

broadly multiculturalist policies, especially those able to influence European

governments, have given up on the term ‘multiculturalism’ in favour of ‘inter-

culturalism’, progressive intellectuals should consider abandoning the term ‘multi-

culturalism’ to promote their policies and join the interculturalist bandwagon (or

‘fad’, as he calls it on p. 213).1

Kymlicka understands better than most the dynamics of intellectual�political

engagement, and as a leading publicly engaged scholar from whom we, as indeed

very many others, have learned a great deal, this is a forceful observation. In our

view, however, he overestimates the political power of the term ‘interculturalism’ in

Europe, and certainly in the UK. Kymlicka argues � by reference to the White Paper

on Intercultural Dialogue issued by the Council of Europe in 2008 after

consultations with various experts, NGOs and stakeholders and signed by ministers

from the 47 member states � that by 2008 ‘‘there was a clear political consensus that

we need a post-multicultural alternative, to be called ‘interculturalism’’’ (Kymlicka

this issue: 213). While we acknowledge that not all European countries are in the

same position on interculturalism, we would emphasise three issues in particular.

First, the Council of Europe is a forum for international discussion and is certainly

not to be in any way confused with European institutions such as the European

Union and its Council of Ministers, the European Commission and the European

Parliament.2

Second, it is simply not the case that there is a consensus amongst European

governments in favour of interculturalism, nor have European governments made

much if any effort to promote the White Paper (a Google search on 15 October 2011

showed that of the first 100 items listed by Google, there were no newspapers,

popular magazines, TV or radio channels, only the Council of Europe and various

NGOs, think tanks and related networks’ websites). We suggest that this is because

‘interculturalism’ belongs to certain kinds of NGOs, and not to those making or

implementing policies or the media that comments on them. When we do hear

Western European politicians such as Merkel, Sarkozy and Cameron talk about

multiculturalism, as they most conspicuously and loudly did in the winter of

2010�11 to denounce it (Fekete 2011), they did not mention let alone offer any

advocacy for ‘interculturalism’. The most favoured alternative term to ‘multi-

culturalism’ is ‘integration’ and its synonyms in various languages. Given that this

is the case, it is not obvious that the best political strategy is to subscribe to the

intellectually shoddy ‘interculturalism myth’ (as Kymlicka describes it). A better

strategy is to ensure that multiculturalism is presented as one, amongst other, modes

of integration, and that is what one of us has done (Modood 2012). Just as some

politicians have recognised that ‘assimilation’ is too politically damaged to be

resuscitated and so have preferred to use terms such as ‘cohesion’, ‘integration’ and

‘national identity’ while giving them an assimilative interpretation, so advocates of

multiculturalism should contest those meanings and demonstrate that these concepts

are capable of multiculturalist interpretations. In so doing it is not unreasonable to

234 T. Modood & N. Meer

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f B

rist

ol]

at 0

3:17

17

Apr

il 20

12

point out to interculturalists that whilst they have good reasons for wanting some

aspects of multiculturalism reformed, they should not be joining the pillorying of

multiculturalism, as they do not have good reasons, intellectual or political, for

abandoning multiculturalism.

Third, we would wish to complicate the relationship between popular politics and

policy by distinguishing between political actors ‘‘who look to public opinion as a

source of guidance . . . and as a means of gauging the resonance of its [their] own

programme’’ (Boswell 2009: 20) and administrative departments who have to

substantiate policy through consultation and forms of legitimisation. This is some-

times termed ‘epistemic authority’ (Guess 2001 in Boswell 2009) and refers to the ways

in which government departments and agencies need to exhibit ‘‘confidence that their

decisions are well founded’’ (Boswell 2009: 20). Looking at the UK we can identity a

number of multiculturalist policies that have been facilitated by sound social science

and pursued at some political cost and public (especially media) opposition. This

would be true of the introduction of the Incitement to Religious Hatred Act (2006)

(Meer 2008); the increasing number of Muslim faith schools supported by public

money (Meer 2009); and the further introduction of Equalities legislation and its

incorporation into public sector duties (Meer 2010b), amongst others. Our argument

is that unpicking the intellectual weaknesses of public policy oriented arguments

remains a highly valuable activity precisely because of the wider conditions that the

enactment of public policy must satisfy. To put it another way, scholarly interventions

critiquing the intellectual coherence of interculturalism remain a powerful means of

distinguishing between purely instrumental statements and intellectually robust

research that is debated and taken up in the public sphere. This complicates the

relationship between academic knowledge and its political uses, and in so doing reveals

why intellectual appraisals garner a public force that amounts to more than their

internal integrity.

In a different manner, Pnina Werbner too brings out the political character of

multiculturalism, the element of a bottom-up struggle as well as policy-making, the

aspect of ‘multiculturalism-in-history’ and not merely multiculturalism as day-to-day

tolerance. This is central to our understanding of multiculturalism, and our dis-

satisfaction with interculturalism in part stemmed from what we saw as an attempt by

its European advocates to displace the political; to critique a political multiculturalism

with an apolitical, local-encounters-based individualism. Our literature searches failed

to identify a political interculturalism in Europe in the English language (we will come

back to the language issue later) and we had to turn to Quebec to identify a political

interculturalism. We were aware that the latter was being picked up by some European

academics (for example, Zapata-Barrero 2009). We were also aware that the single

most important characteristic of political interculturalism as developed by authors

and advocates in Quebec was its emphasis on national identity within a multi-national

state. This was of course related to the promotion of a francophone Quebec identity

against a Canadian federal multiculturalism perceived to be indifferent to the dis-

tinction between a sub-state nation and an ethnic group, which resonated for some


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f B

rist

ol]

at 0

3:17

17

Apr

il 20

12

with the position of, for example, Catalunya, Flanders and Scotland in Spain, Belgium

and Britain, respectively.

We realised therefore that there were two different political thrusts. One critiqued

multiculturalism’s alleged encouragement of multi-ethnic segregation; the other

critiqued the alleged blindness to the importance of sub-state minority nationalism.

Neither of these positions are automatic political allies. The former was primarily the

position of national state integrationists and liberal individualists; the latter implied

anti-state nationalism, which may or may not be liberal and may or may not be

sympathetic to minority identities within the minority nation. However, as both

these critiques of multiculturalism were present in the positions of self-stated

interculturalists we examined them both. Our view at the time of writing our paper

was that the anti-groupist individualistic critique was more political in the damage it

did to multiculturalism than in any alternative it put up. As we have already noted,

Will Kymlicka has drawn our attention to the fact that the Council of Europe, with

its 47 member states, embraced this critique of multiculturalism in the name of

interculturalism in 2008 (Kymlicka this issue). Levey points out that while up to then

European interculturalism had focused more on civil society rather than the state,

this new state interculturalism critique of state multiculturalism ‘‘Canadianised’’ the

European debate (this issue: 218).

Actually, it did not. Whatever the Council of Ministers had agreed to at their

Council of Europe jamborees they did not intend it for their national audiences and

made little or no effort to promote it in their own countries. They may have shared the

view that multiculturalism had to be politically dislodged, but they certainly did not

have any deep interest in interculturalism (or a new multi-nationalism) to replace

multiculturalism. In their own countries, they declared multiculturalism divisive and a

failure but they did not contrast it with interculturalism. Their chosen vocabulary for

the alternative to multiculturalism came out of a portfolio consisting of ‘community

cohesion’, ‘integration’ and the various ways in which ideas of national citizenship (at

the state level) are expressed.

Methodology and Positionality

To some extent this last point is about political strategy and is raised in Geoff Levey’s

typically precise and thoughtful reflection, in which he too concludes that because

multiculturalism’s ‘semantic capital’ has been spent, political considerations neces-

sarily come to the fore. Unlike Kymlicka, however, Levey is more cautious of engaging

in this debate on others’ terms, and we share with him the view that it is preferable to

strive ‘‘to clarify the meaning of concepts and to correct confusions and misrepre-

sentation’’ (Levey this issue: 223). In this pursuit, Michel Wieviorka provides a critical

reflection on the alleged ‘Anglo-Saxon ethno-centrism’ reflected in our paper.3 It is of

course difficult to deny that because we work in English we are to some extent limited

in our access to materials not in English, and so try to work with materials from non-

English authors who also express their views in English (as in our paper we refer to


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f B

rist

ol]

at 0

3:17

17

Apr

il 20

12

Gagnon and Iacovino who offer a francophone account presented in English). It is

probably worth stepping back however to distinguish between seeking to be all-

inclusive and our relatively modest objectives.

As we state at the beginning of our paper: ‘‘It is important to register at the outset

that the article is concerned with what we understand as ‘political interculturalism’’’

(Meer and Modood this issue: 177), by which we mean the ways in which there are at

least two types of interculturalism: one focusing on the encounters of difference �and which is relatively apolitical even though there is a politics to it � and another

which is explicitly a form of political interculturalism. Our interest is in the ways in

which political interculturalism offers a critique of multiculturalism. As such, the

purpose of this paper is not to offer a comprehensive account of interculturalism,

but to provide an entry point in developing a discussion, especially in relation to

multiculturalism and interculturalism as frameworks for political relations in a

context of cultural diversity. We should perhaps have added the word ‘Europe’ in our

sentence, but we assumed it self-evident that we were not making developments in

South Asia or Latin America central to our discussion. Having said this Wieviorka is

quite correct to quote us as claiming:

. . . the term ‘multiculturalism’ in Europe came to mean, and now meansthroughout the English-speaking world and beyond, the political accommodationby the state and/or a dominant group of all minority cultures defined first andforemost by reference to race, ethnicity or religion, and, additionally but morecontroversially, by reference to other group-defining characteristics such asnationality and aboriginality. (this issue: 181)

Yet this need not be evidence of ethno-centrism anymore than its reverse: a reflection of

how a concept has come to assume a wide-ranging meaning that takes into

consideration different contexts and life-worlds. Indeed, and although we ourselves

do not in our piece apply the definition to, for example, India, it is not clear to us why

our description would necessarily be inaccurate given how closely it corresponds to

readings found in the work of scholars who have (see, for example, Bhargava 1998,

Parekh 2000). It is, for example, interesting to note the extent to which Indian political

theory is presently an anglophone activity conducted in English (Parekh 1992). More

broadly, we readily acknowledge how our argument has been informed by studying the

experiences of ethnic, cultural and religious challenges comparatively in contemporary

Europe (see Meer and Modood 2011, Modood and Meer 2011, and more broadly

Modood and Werbner 1997, Modood et al. 2006, Tryandifillidou et al. 2011). It is also

worth noting that we spend some time in our paper offering the intellectual health

warning that multiculturalism as a concept is � like very many others � ‘polysemic’. We

point in particular to Bhabha (1998: 31) who discusses the tendency for multi-

culturalism to serve as a ‘portmanteau term’, one that encapsulates a variety of

sometimes contested meanings (see, for example, Meer and Modood 2009). None-

theless, we accept the thrust of Wieviorka’s argument that location can make the

difference as to what one is capable of understanding and empathising with; something


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f B

rist

ol]

at 0

3:17

17

Apr

il 20

12

all social scientists must remain cognisant of. Where we are in less agreement is over the

charge of methodological nationalism in the context of ‘super-diversity’. Here we think

there is a tendency to subsume the study of state-level discourse and policy into a

monolithic category (methodological nationalism), and indeed ignores the extent to

which we are comparative in scope in registering debates in Federal Canada (see

Kymlicka this issue), Australia (see Levey this issue), and Belgium.

Religion and Culture (and Groups)

Two of our discussants make a similarly sharp distinction between, first, the concepts

of religion and culture, and second, the kinds of normative implications that arise

from them. Beginning with the first issue, in her wide-ranging account Pnina

Werbner, drawing upon her wealth of research in the field, shares with Wieviorka a

conceptual hesitation to couple too closely ‘religion’ with ‘culture’. More precisely,

in her view, multicultural and religious discourses are of a different order to one

another, reflect diverging content; and herald different implications for thinking

about contemporary diversity. In contrast, our position leaves open the question of

coupling or non-coupling religion and culture by placing the focus upon the subject

instead of the object. Our approach therefore shares something with Fredrick Barth’s

formulation that, first, critiques anthropological traditions that focus exclusively

upon cultural content, and so seeks to emphasise the subjective dimension of

recognition � an internal self-awareness � over the objective definition of the group

designated by an external party (1969). Second, and in shifting the emphasis away

from the possible characteristics of a group � that is, taking us away from definitions

of groups as heralding displays of particular traits or comprising particular coherent

behaviours in the classical anthropological sense � Barth (1969: 10�11) argued that

we should focus upon the ‘boundaries’ between groups as sites of identity

maintenance. This does not mean, however, that we should think of religion or

culture in terms of ‘‘a world of separate peoples, and each organised in a society

which can legitimately be isolated for description as an island to itself ’’ (Barth 1969:

10�11; see Meer 2010a: chap. 3).

The methodological implications of listening to these internal voices is not only

relevant to ethnographic work, however, but can be adopted in large-scale survey

design. For example, in the last of the 10-yearly Policy Studies Institute surveys into the

conditions of ethnic minorities in Britain, Modood et al. (1997: 291�338) investigated

the question: ‘‘how do ethnic minority people think of themselves?’’ Recognising the

situational and contextual nature of the question, they worked on the understanding

that the answers entailed ‘‘not what people do but what people say or believe about

themselves’’. Thus self-description is central and includes expressions of what might be

called an ‘associational or communal identity’, as well as cultural practices. Contrasting

this with a designated ethnicity according to country of origin or parental heritage,

they found that while people with African-Caribbean ethnicities maintained that skin

colour was the most important factor in terms of their self-description, for people with


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f B

rist

ol]

at 0

3:17

17

Apr

il 20

12

South Asian ethnicities it was religion that proved most important. Although they

looked at various dimensions of culture and ethnicity such as marriage, language,

dress � all of which ‘command considerable allegiance’ � they concluded that religion

‘‘is central in the self definition of the majority of South Asian people’’. Thus when they

asked South Asian respondents ‘‘Do you ever think of yourself as being black?’’, only

about a fifth of over 1,500 respondents gave an affirmative answer.

Of course, this raises the related issue of groups and group identities. In our view,

the idea of a group intrinsically involves some degree of positioning within and

between the sites of ‘boundaries’. These are not unproblematic, can be multiple and

may be informed by common experiences of racism; sexuality; socio-economic

positions; geographical locality and so forth. In this sense, all groups are socially

constructed and it is clear that people tend to associate with those with whom they

perceive some shared affinity. One of the reasons that it can be important to

recognise religious minorities as a cultural group is that this can be how they

understand themselves. As Modood (1994: 9) has argued, it is inconsistent to protest

against the use of religious group categories as analytical categories simply because

it has the same ‘‘dialectical tension between specificity and generality’’ that all group

categories are subject to. This is not to ‘essentialise’ or ‘reify’ the category, for

example, of Muslim, since it can remain

as internally diverse as ‘Christian’ or ‘Belgian’ or ‘middle-class’, or any othercategory helpful in ordering our understanding of contemporary Europe; but justas diversity does not lead to the abandonment of social concepts in general, so withthat of ‘Muslim’. (Modood 2003: 100)

This leads us nicely to the second issue of what multiculturalism should rightly be

about and what should be covered in the policy field. We recognise as legitimate those

group assertions that project positive images and demands for respect (in a manner

that means the demand for inclusion might invoke and repudiate the differences that

have been denied inclusion in the first place). Key to this potential assertiveness is

that recognition of a group’s mode of being rather than a protracted mode of

oppression should be recognised where it is deployed. The implication being that

groups should not be silenced or coerced into abandoning what is most important to

them by succumbing to hegemonic categories (see Meer 2010a: 55�80). What is being

advocated, therefore, is the space for minorities to draw upon resources to resist

constraints in creative and dynamic ways.

We can all agree that one of the main reasons that multiculturalism has become

unpopular amongst voters, politicians and academics is that in the last decade or two

it has been used by some Muslim political claims-makers and sometimes positively

responded to by policymakers. Wieviorka and Werbner additionally argue that

multiculturalists have conflated culture and religion with the result that Muslims have

made inappropriate policy claims and have been accommodated inappropriately. For

Wieviorka, ‘‘the legal and institutional approach to religion in democracy falls within

the domain of what the French call laicite or secularism’’ (this issue: 228), while for


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f B

rist

ol]

at 0

3:17

17

Apr

il 20

12

Werbner ‘‘issues usually regarded as a matter of multicultural policy, for example

the dispensation to wear exotic headdresses to school or work (turbans, veils,

skullcaps) more rightly belong in the constitutional domain of religious pluralism’’

(this issue: 204). (One of the other discussants has argued a similar position

elsewhere (Kymlicka 2009)).

As we elaborate in our original discussion, especially our discussion of illiberalism

and culture, when we are talking about racialised post-immigration ethno-religious

political assertiveness, confining it to the area of religious pluralism or secularism is

inadequate, for it is likely to lead to tolerance or even an exclusion from the public

sphere when what these groups, no less than those defined by race, ethnicity, gender

and sexuality, are seeking is legitimate recognition of their presence in � and in the

(re)making of � the public space (Modood 1997). Our concern therefore is not only

with the concepts of culture and religion, with analytical categories and classifica-

tions, but with their role in the politics of minority identities. There is a direct

parallel here with Wieviorka’s view that multiculturalism is not about racialised

groups (this issue: 228). The African-American shift from civil rights to ‘black and

proud’, ‘black nationalism’ or ‘afrocentrism’ was a critical component of the 1960s

marginalised-identity assertions and movements, and some years later also occurred

in Britain and other places.

Discourse and Analytical Precision

Also worth noting is that while Werbner is not comfortable about the conflation of

religious pluralism and identity politics and notes that ‘‘the discursive attack on

multiculturalism may be conceived of as a rejection by British politicians and the

media of the invasion of religious discourses into the public sphere’’ (this issue: 206),

she rightly notes that ‘‘the reasoned responses of Muslim leaders however, utilising

the national platform of their own ethnic press, has carved out a space of intercultural

civility in which they argue against allegations of extremism passionately and yet

rationally’’ (this issue: 206).

Despite a different position on the culture�religion nexus, there is nevertheless

much in Werbner’s contribution that we share, especially her emphasis on multi-

culturalism as a discourse as well as policy. Though it is not clear to us how we support

the view that Muslim groups will ‘‘disappear by fiat if politicians and policymakers

refuse to support them, either rhetorically, on official occasions, or with small dollops

of cash’’ (Werbner this issue: 202). On the contrary, while Cameron, Merkel and

Sarkozy may mean to endorse assimilation or individualistic integration, they are also

acknowledging and possibly reinforcing the sociological reality of group difference

because their lament is that some groups (especially Muslims) are clearly visible as

distinct when they should not be (they attribute this fact to a separatist tendency in the

groups, encouraged by allegedly ‘multiculturalist’ policies). Hence paradoxical as it

may sound, fierce critics of multiculturalism are usually deploying the sociology of

multiculturalism even while rejecting its political dimensions. If they thought these


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f B

rist

ol]

at 0

3:17

17

Apr

il 20

12

groups were merely the product of stereotypes and exclusion (in the sense that ‘racial’

groups are a product of racism) or were primarily socio-economic in character

(perhaps a working-class ‘fraction’), then that would be a sociological disagreement

with the multiculturalists. The irony is of course that the accusatory discourse of ‘some

groups are not integrating’ may actually be reinforcing group identities and therefore

contributing to the social conditions that give multiculturalism a sociological

pertinence. On the other hand, a sociology that marginalised ethnicity in favour of

say, individuals, class and gender, would have a better fit with anti-multiculturalist

politics but may be unable to explain or predict the relevant social reality. A normative

orientation � individualist or multiculturalist � suggests to us an ideal sociology but

also recommends itself to us as feasible politics because it is as though that sociological

model is more accurate than not.

Moreover, it is not just at the level of sociology that anti-multiculturalists may find

themselves using multiculturalist ideas; even while deploying an anti-multiculturalist

discourse they may enact multiculturalist policies. For example, they may continue

with group consultations, representation and accommodation. The latter have

actually increased. The British government has found it necessary to increase the

scale and level of consultations with Muslims in Britain since 9/11, and, dissatisfied

with existing organisations, has sought to increase the number of organised

interlocutors and the channels of communication. Avowedly anti-multiculturalist

countries and governments have worked to increase corporatism in practice, for

example, with the creation by Nicholas Sarkozy of the Conseil Francais du Culte

Musulman in 2003 to represent all Muslims to the French government in matters of

worship and ritual; and by the creation of the Islamkonferenz in Germany in 2005,

an exploratory body, yet with an extensive political agenda. These bodies are partly

top-down efforts to control Muslims or to channel them into certain formations and

away from others; nevertheless, such institutional processes cannot be understood

within the conceptual framework of assimilation, individualist integration or

interculturalism. There is indeed a new intolerance in relation to certain Muslim

practices (for example, the burqa) and this is leading to some new laws or policies in

parts of Europe (though not yet in Britain).

The point is that we do not so much seem to be witnessing a paradigm shift, for

example, from pluralistic integration to individualist integration, but a shift in

discourse, a point of agreement with Kymlicka and perhaps also Werbner and brings

us to Geoff Levey’s summation that discursive opposition is the motivation, so

that, for example, ‘‘[h]ad the [Canadian] federal policy been dubbed interculturalism,

Quebec may well have adopted ‘multiculturalism’ to denote its national status and

distinctive approach to cultural diversity’’ (this issue: 223). Moreover, Levey makes a

very useful distinction between ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ claims deployed in the interculturalist

critique, and whilst we are in agreement over the status of ‘hard’ claims (i.e. that the

rejection of multiculturalism in favour of a superior interculturalism is unpersuasive;

see, for example, Bouchard 2011), Levey does see something of value in the ‘soft’

interculturalism, especially its stress on communication.


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f B

rist

ol]

at 0

3:17

17

Apr

il 20

12

Taking Taylor as a philosophical example, and Australia’s first national multi-

culturalism policy as praxis, he concludes that ‘‘more emphasis on discursive dialogue

in contrast to the experience with or under multiculturalism does not strike me as

unreasonable’’ (Levey this issue: 219). As ever Levey makes this point persuasively.

One objection to this selective reception, however, may be that to attribute a lesser

tendency for communication to multiculturalism per se, rather than the wider make

up of the civil society and state, would endorse the analyses that multiculturalism has

prevented dialogue and discussion, which we think it has not. Indeed we would

maintain that even Charles Taylor’s position allies itself with that of Parekh on the

importance of intercultural dialogue (Parekh, 2000). The related point, however, is

that taken with the other potential ‘soft’ clauses interculturalism may propose, we are

not convinced that the conditions for multi-directional dialogue would be better

secured by an appeal to interculturalism rather than to multiculturalism. Where we

are in more agreement with Levey is in his appraisal of the division between

multiculturalists on the precise status of national culture and identity, and how this is

formulated in state multiculturalism. Our discussion of interculturalism Quebec-style

perhaps focused too greatly on the counter-example, of strong ethno-national groups

under the remit of interculturalism, in a manner that didn’t also register the

variations in multiculturalism. Indeed, there is much more in Levey’s very thoughtful

consideration with which we can wholly agree and so share much common ground.

Conclusions

The purpose of this paper was not to offer a comprehensive critique of inter-

culturalism per se, but instead to provide an entry point in developing a discussion in

relation to multiculturalism and interculturalism as frameworks for political relations

in a context of cultural diversity. In focusing on the divergences between our original

paper and the invited responses, this rejoinder has also foregrounded the many

agreements between us. The chief one being a relative consensus that for the objectives

of the integration and recognition of various migration-related minorities in

contemporary Europe, political interculturalism as it is currently being discussed is

an unpersuasive alternative to modes of multiculturalism.

Notes

[1] He presently exempts Canada from such a strategy as he thinks there continues to be

sufficient support for the term there. We take the view that despite Prime Minister

Cameron’s Munich speech the fate of multiculturalism in Britain also remains as yet

undecided. Indeed, the ethic that it is commonly deemed to entail (respect for difference and

ethnic cultural vitality) appears to have achieved some resolute traction in spite of some

forceful assaults (Modood 2012), and it is arguable that the ‘defence’ of multiculturalism is

more audible today than when the first critiques appeared in the post-9/11 environment.

This is particularly evident in the readings of multiculturalism as either a source or outcome

of hybridity, but is more contested in the multiculturalism of ‘groups’ and especially of

ethno-religious groups (see Meer and Modood 2009).


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f B

rist

ol]

at 0

3:17

17

Apr

il 20

12

[2] See Council of Europe [online], About Us (n.d.): http://www.coe.int/aboutCoe/index.asp?

page�CommentTravaillonsNous&l�en

[3] Yet Wieviorka’s conclusion is entirely consistent with our own, when he argues:

‘‘[M]ulticulturalism is a concept that can and must be re-enchanted, while interculturalism

functions at a much less sophisticated level, and a much less political one for us to be able to

assert that it can act as a substitute. At most it may be possible to envisage it as

complementary’’ (this issue: 230).

Works Cited

Barth, F., ed., 1969. Ethnic groups and boundaries: the social organisation of culture difference.

London: Allen and Unwin.

Bhabha, H., 1998. Culture’s in between. In: D. Bennett, ed. Multicultural states � rethinking

difference and identity. London: Routledge, 29�36.

Bhargava, R., ed., 1998. Secularism and its critics. New Delhi: OUP.

Boswell, C., 2009. The political uses of expert knowledge: immigration policy and social research.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Bouchard, G., 2011. What is interculturalism? McGill law journal, 56, 435�468.

Council of Europe [online], n.d. About us. Available from: http://www.coe.int/aboutCoe/index.asp?

page�CommentTravaillonsNous&l�en [Accessed 13 January 2012].

Fekete, L., 2011. The coordinated attack on multiculturalism. Open democracy, 11 May.

Kymlicka, W., 2009. Historic settlements and new challenges. Ethnicities, 9 (4), 546�552.

Meer, N., 2008. The politics of voluntary and involuntary identities: are Muslims in Britain an

ethnic, racial or religious minority? Patterns of prejudice, 41 (5), 61�81.

Meer, N., 2009. Identity articulations, mobilisation and autonomy in the movement for Muslim

schools in Britain. Race ethnicity and education, 12 (3), 379�398.

Meer, N., 2010a. Citizenship, identity and the politics of multiculturalism. Basingstoke: Palgrave.

Meer, N., 2010b. The impact of European equality directives upon British anti-discrimination

legislation. Policy & politics, 38 (2), 197�215.

Meer, N. and Modood, T., 2009. The multicultural state we are in: Muslims, ‘multiculture’ and the

‘civic re-balancing’ of British multiculturalism. Political studies, 57 (3), 473�497.

Meer, N. and Modood, T., 2011. The multicultural states we’re in. In: A. Triandafyllidou, T. Modood

and N. Meer, eds. European multiculturalism(s): cultural, religious and ethnic challenges.

Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Modood, T., 1994. Muslim identity: real or imagined? CSIC Paper Europe No. 12, Selly Oaks

Colleges, Birmingham.

Modood, T., 2003. Muslims and the politics of difference. Political quarterly, 74 (1), 100�115.

Modood, T., 2012. Post-immigration ‘difference’ and integration. London: The British Academy.

Modood, T., Berthoud, R., Lakey, J., Nazroo, J., Smith, P., Virdee, S. and Beishon, S., 1997. The

fourth national survey of ethnic minorities in Britain: diversity and disadvantage. London:

Policy Studies Institute.

Modood, T. and Meer, N., 2011. Framing multicultural citizenship in Europe. In:

A. Triandafyllidou, T. Modood and N. Meer, eds. European multiculturalism(s): cultural,


Modood, T., Triandafyllidou, A. and Zapata-Barrero, R., eds., 2006. Multiculturalism, Muslims and

citizenship: a European approach. London: Routledge.

Modood, T. and Werbner, P., eds., 1997. The politics of multiculturalism in the New Europe. London:

Zed Books.

Parkeh, B., 1992. The poverty of Indian political theory. History of political thought, 13,

535�560.


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f B

rist

ol]

at 0

3:17

17

Apr

il 20

12

http://www.coe.int/aboutCoe/index.asp?page&hairsp;=&hairsp;CommentTravaillonsNous&l&hairsp;=&hairsp;en
















Parekh, B., 2000. Re-thinking multiculturalism. Basingstoke: Palgrave.

Tryandifillidou, A., Modood, T. and Meer, N., eds., 2011. European multiculturalism(s): cultural,


UNESCO, 2008. World report on cultural diversity. United Nations.

Zapata-Barrero, R., 2009. Building a public philosophy of immigration in Catalonia. The terms of

debate. In: R. Zapata-Barrero, ed. Immigration and self-government of minority nations.

Bruxelles: Peter Lang.


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f B

rist

ol]

at 0

3:17

17

Apr

il 20

12

Documents

Interculturalism Multiculturalism Debate